In my last article printed in this newspaper, I compared the fiscal policy of the current administration in City Hall with a wagering theory known as the "gambler's ruin." Simply stated the theory contends that in the random process of wins and losses, the longer a person gambles the greater the chance of going broke.
Has the current administration simply adopted the "gambler's ruin" practice as its official fiscal policy?
Then he develops enough machinery to allow students to solve some problems and analyze card games and lotteries, and before anyone notices they have stumbled into the non-trivial questions, they are working out the
gambler's ruin problem.
The Kelly method guaranteed that Thorp would never go broke at the blackjack table, that is, avoid the "
gambler's ruin" result of betting and losing all or more of his money.
But I would say the
gambler's ruin problem is the most interesting topic to readers, as it presents the cases when the player will be ruined in a repeated game with different winning probabilities.
They include Huygens and the
gambler's ruin (1657), Daniel Bernoulli and the St.