Numb3rs

Tyler Cowen blogged about Benford’s Law yesterday. Today there is a nice discussion going on there.

People who went to bookshops with me in the last 3 weeks or so may now understand why I’m kinda psyched about Tyler blogging Benford’s Law. Some of my friends have been wondering what I was doing reading up books on gambling and lotteries. I was merely interested to see if the lottery numbers followed Benford’s Law (they do not. I found a book that claimed to contain jackpot numbers for the last 30 years or so and it looked like a random number table instead – snapped 2 pages on my cell phone and crunched the numbers – nope, it doesn’t follow Benford’s Law. At least not in the last 2 years).

Just like what Dr. Lim (my econs lect) asked me when I asked him for a recommendation letter. We talked about game theory, and he asked if I was a gambling man. LOL. To many I’ve been known to never take even small risks, what more gamble.

No, I’m not advocating gambling. It’s a dumb thing to do. cfgt told me the odds before (heck, his life revolves around statistical odds) – its about 1 in 60 billion or something like that to hit the jackpot in a 6-digit lottery like Lotto. No one is that dumb to do it. Or maybe people are that dumb to do it – which is why the owner of Damacai (one of the 3 lottery companies in Malaysia), Ananda Krishnan is probably one of the richest dudes in Malaysia (Maxis and Astro PLC not withstanding)

Okay, so maybe people will do it, but I definitely won’t. It’s dumb.

Speaking of dumb things, after commenting in Tyler’s blog, I met up with Adrian and his girlfriend, Jinny. And along the way, I think I irked Jinny’s feelings when I said something about not liking how Christians act (she’s a Christian). Oh. I wore mismatched socks too. Dumb? You bet.