Statistics and Probability

Mathematics happened to be one of my favorite subjects in Sec. School. I easily scored top marks in my school for mathematics and the crazy old bag of a maths teacher seemed to like me alot. He invited me and MZ quite often to his house for a time of "discussion" on his mathematics solving skills and stock market strategies. (ie. I could never understand the latter) There was one particular part of maths which I never really could grasp well. Yeap.. StateyProbs.. My maths teacher never ceased to amaze me on how important, Stats and Probs can be. The light hearted examples being in playing Cards, poker, casinos and mahjhong! Stats and Probs plays a very important part in these games. Game Theory they called it? I was never too fascinated with it. Stats and Probs to me, had always been a very abstract branch of maths.

They basically calculate how "it could have been" s.. and what "it could become" s.. Don't make sense? Yeah.. it's doens't make sense to me either. I'm not trying to downplay this department but maths to me, should be something very precise and used for evidential purposes. In other words, to solve, prove and reason. Stats and Probs draws more grey areas than the black thick lines.

My colleague recently shared about the possiblity of striking gold if we have a thousand dollar to spare, keeps buying the same set of numbers for 4Ds.. It seems incredible and yet logical to me that it will work in the long run. After a chat with Marcus, I was put in a clearer perspective that, of all the scenarios availing from a 1000 dollar bill. Each number is of equal possibility. The only real difference, the how much one can spare to buy 4D, and how greedy, obsessed, determined, desperate etc .. a person can be. No matter how one tries to use Stats and Probs to plot out a winning streak for 4D and ToTo, the underlying reason can always be a simple human illogical obesession in striking gold.

Well, that's that. The last time I tried to use Stats and Probs, I was playing BlackJack in a friend's house during Chinese new. I manage to win back what I lost. Now that's, putting maths into pracitcal use.

Semplice Simon