this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 90 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure the "father" knows exactly what the expected monetary value of those is. They just choose to value the excitement higher. Which is probably why a large portion of the players do it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Yup, I don’t get a lottery ticket expecting to win, I get it to spend the night dreaming of what I could do if I win.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Also, you can get good grades and be a moron. My HS valedictorian was the dumbest person I have ever met. She could regurgitate information on a test, but didn't understand a bit of it.

Last I checked she was hocking some MLM bullshit on Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

MLM

So every time this abbreviation comes up I have to ask, are you talking about Multi-Level Marketing, Men Loving Men, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or Muslim Lives Matter?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What do the context clues suggest?

Do you think they are talking about someone selling a Marxism package?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sorry I didn't know what "hocking" meant. That doesn't really help tho, can you sell multi level marketing?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

yes, that is the entire point of it is to make people sell a product that's worthless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

it's all hokey pokey to me but I suppose you're right

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

TIL hocking and hawking mean the same thing. Which one came first?

[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago

You can't outsmart addiction.

[–] PaupersSerenade 41 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Wisdom vs Intelligence. There's also something to be said about being knowledgeable in your field and thinking you're knowledgeable in all fields

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Also IQ is not intelligence. I'm seeing more and more posts from people who talk about IQ like it's their real-life INT stat. Is this just an American thing? Do people use the terms interchangeably or are you guys all doing IQ tests regularly and ranking yourselves by how good you are at puzzles?

[–] PaupersSerenade 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To be fair I never mentioned IQ. I was just trying to make a joke. You can take it up with the original greenposter.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah I agree with you. I'm building on your point and questioning OOP's use of IQ!

[–] PaupersSerenade 4 points 11 months ago

Ah my bad! You can tell I didn't earn my Mensa bumper sticker ;)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There’s also something to be said about being knowledgeable in your field and thinking you’re knowledgeable in all fields

Yup that right there is the core of this issue, happens to the best of us.

Fortunately it doesn't happen to me, I'm a CS expert but also a sociology expert so I know how to distinguish it

[–] PaupersSerenade 3 points 11 months ago

I admit I forgot I commented in greentext for a moment there haha

[–] baked_tea 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't think you can master high level math with just wisdom

[–] PaupersSerenade 9 points 11 months ago

It's late for me, so maybe I'm not getting your joke. I was implying that intelligence was used for the math degree and lack of wisdom in buying scratchers. I was also trying to reference an oft quoted DnD Stat meme;

Strength is being able to crush a tomato

Dexterity is being able to dodge a tomato

Constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato

Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit

Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad

Charisma is being able to sell a tomato based fruit salad

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago

He’s not dumb he’s just addicted to gambling. Plenty of smart people are

[–] pftbest 22 points 11 months ago

There are good doctors who smoke cigarettes, there are people who are good at math and still play lottery, it's the same. They know it's not good for you, but can't help it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Hang on. All we know is that the father is more intelligent than OP. And that he can't understand the maths his farther teachers.

Perhaps OP is just real dumb and his farther is a high school teacher.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Teaching math at university

"Maybe he's teaching in high school"

What

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah that's the point, that the OP might not be intelligent enough to know that it's a high school instead of university

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago
[–] DudeImMacGyver 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Could be but I promise you, smart people can 100% be stupid too: Everyone does dumb shit sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

smart people can 100% be stupid too

To expand on that, people can be smart in one aspect and really fucking dumb in others. Intelligence is a spectrum, it's not binary like you're either smart or dumb. Plenty of people who understand quantum level physics etc. who are socially and emotionally at the level of children and vice versa and so on.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

Someone can be smart and still think things are fun that you don't think are fun.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] Gullible 1 points 11 months ago

Remember to DI center on scratch tickets, kids.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If the expected value is positive, then by all means you should play the lottery. Just bear in mind that the utility of money is nonlinear, so Kelly will overextend you - use something like max log-value and rederive.

The only time this happens are either scratch off tickets that are horribly broken or rolling-jackpot lotteries where you can win what other people put in before you.

[–] archon 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Just bear in mind that the utility of money is nonlinear, so Kelly will overextend you - use something like max log-value and rederive.

I'm too stupid to piece together what this means, but I'm interested.

Kelly is a betting stake formula? But deriative of max log-value will provide a better result?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

i got you, watch this for understanding of kelly criterion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FuuYSM7yOo

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Kelly is the betting stake formula - just plug in the expected value and it will tell you how much of your money you should gamble to maximize your winnings over time. But it does that with more or less a 50-50 chance of you losing all your money. Because winning 10 dollars means a lot more to someone who makes minimum wage than a millionaire, you need to skew the formula to take that into account.

The easiest way to do that is to use the log-value of money, and rederive the kelly criterion based on that value instead.

From what I recall the math works out so that unless you have a substantial pile of money, the ideal number of lottery tickets is always between 0 and 1.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Even if the math works out that the lottery would be EV+, you still can't know for sure it isn't crooked

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Lotteries are generally regulated but corruption isn't unheard of.

But outside regulated state sponsored lotteries - it's safe to assume it's crooked in one way or another.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

He knows the odds and just how many times he has to play in order to win.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

You can't win if you don't play.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

If he's only teaching maths, he's not that clever either