Ancestors

Written by Stuart Langridge on 2025-01-04 at 09:35

Maths people, help!

In "Scarne on Cards", John Scarne discusses the odds for a game. He says this:

"The chances are 12220 to 9880 in their favour. [These numbers are definitely correct -- sil] That is, the percentage in their favour is 10-1/123."

Where's he getting that percentage from? How's he doing the calculation? I can't end up at that number, so I must be doing something wrong...

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Written by Peter Oliver on 2025-01-04 at 10:41

@sil I'm not sure what "percentage in their favour" means in this context, but could we see a photo of the typesetting of "10-1/123"?

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Toot

Written by Peter Oliver on 2025-01-04 at 10:48

@sil Incidentally, if I was emperor of the universe, I would ban percentages. They look like a number you could add, but are really a fraction you should multiply, and people find that confusing and difficult. You get people saying things like "The X party are ten percent ahead of the Y party in the polls", when 20% to %10 is actually double (that is, 100% ahead).

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Descendants

Written by Stuart Langridge on 2025-01-04 at 10:50

@mavit yes! I have no intuition on these which means that I never properly understand what the number actually means!

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