jmcgready’s misc universe

OK, so it won’t be $150 Million, but it’ll happen more often -
and it will be due to probability theory, not
a tax on the ignorance of probability theory

Creating an artificial windfall generator | Wise Bread

Once they explained it to me, I realized that they were describing an artificial windfall generator. They could have done almost
the same thing by each putting a mark a week into a common fund and
then having a party every year, but that wouldn’t have been as much
fun.

This way the party was different every time–sometimes bigger,
sometimes smaller;
sometimes in the spring, sometimes in the fall;
sometimes one right after another,
other times with a year-long gap.

You could, in fact, do exactly the same thing, with a little discipline.
Create your artificial windfall generator this way:

• Open a bank account
• Every week deposit $1
  (or $10 or $100, depending on the sort of windfall you want)
• Every
  week roll two dice one time.
  If they come up double-sixes, you win!
• Throw a party with the money in the account!
  (Or do whatever it is you
  like to do with a windfall.)

On average, two dice will
come up double-sixes once out of every 36 rolls,
so you’ll be throwing
your party every eight or nine months on average
and you’ll have $36
(or $360, or $3600) to throw it with.
(A bit more than that, actually,
because you get to keep the interest
instead of letting the lottery
agent keep it.)

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and I seriously need to go to sleep.

I’m opening tomorrow and working 10-5.

more on Thanksgiving later…