From: John Conover <john@email.johncon.com>
Subject: Re: CNET.com - News - E-Business - Latest dot-com bomb: TheMan.com
Date: 4 Nov 2000 01:43:14 -0000
That's about a 4 in 5 chance of winning. But it can be wrong 1 chance
in 5, too. What this means is that you play this game many times, you
will win 4 out of 5 times.
So, you wouldn't want to bet your nest egg on it, (you stand a 20%
chance of losing everything on the first game, if you do, and you
can't play any longer.) But you have to bet something, otherwise you
can't make anything, (another of mathematics most profound insights.)
The optimum lies in between. And the magic optimum is when F = 2P - 1,
where P is the probability of a win, (0.78 on Bush in this case,) and
F is the fraction of your nest egg to wager, (or about 56% in this
case.)
Based only on the popular vote, of course-and I don't know any bookies
that taking bets based only on the popular vote.
John
BTW, the -d option to tsinvest controls how the program does this
methodology; the -d1 is what was outlined here.
John Conover writes:
>
> So, Bush has a 0.84 * 0.93 chance of winning, or about 78%,
> (considering only the popular vote,) based on the accuracy of the
> tracking polls, and the ability of Gore to move them.
>
--
John Conover, john@email.johncon.com, http://www.johncon.com/