Undecided on title

After the consultation last week, I've decided to stay with the subject of gambling in relation to mathematics. However, after doing some research online I realised that gambling is a topic too wide. There's a need to narrow down the scope to make my life easier.

I've deduced 2 possible titles, the first being the original "Gambling - Mathematics or Luck?" and "Will Mathematics help us win in gambling?".

In the first title I find it being too broad of a topic, in the sense where-by we would have to delve into the various types of gambling and how mathematics has it's stand in gambling. This would allow me to meet my word limit easily but would make life very difficult in doing research and stuff. And like Hao Quan mentioned, with too much Mathematics it would make the paper very alien to others.

The latter would help me narrow down the scope to how mathematics would help one win in gambling. I figured this would be easier and more interesting as it will relate to most of us. Or would you guys think writing from the perspective of the player is better?

A brief outline and key points would be as follows (more to be added, research in progress)

Introduction - contains the general introduction as will as defining a few key terms like "House Edge","Expected Value" that are commonly used when discussing about gaming mathematics.

Body

1) How does house edge work?

2) Chance gaming and Chance with skill gaming

3) Gambling Fallacy/Monte Carlo Fallacy - assumption that an event becomes more likely every time it fails to occur.

4) Are gambling events dependent or independent of each other?

5) Betting Systems - will they work against house edge?

ie. Martingale – A system based on staking enough each time to recover losses from previous bet(s) until one wins.

6)Ideal World vs Reality

7)Imperfect Randomness
8)Black Swan Theory – Limits Of Statistics

(6,7,8 will have links)

9) Human Behavior – ability to make judgement?

“casino games are designed mathematically and psychologically to keep you playing long enough that you lose all your money"

Comments needed!

Other then the Mathematics in Gaming concept, I am also looking at the group of Clean Energy as an alternative if the former concept fails to materialise. Energy has been a very well discussed topic due to its all the the publicity that it has been gaining over the years.

We must acknowledge the fact that fossil fuels is a scarce resource and will be obsolete in our life time. Also, global warming, as a result of the emission of greenhouse gases over the years, is very evident in our everyday lives with the ever changing weather conditions and rising sea levels. Therefore there is an increasing need for us to look for alternative energy sources, and they have to be clean, too.

With so many policies and pledges to lower carbon emissions in place, many countries and organisations are actively seeking for these energy sources, and they are making great advancements. Already, China has overtaken the United States as the world's fastest growing wind energy market.

With so much potential in this topic, there comes the problem of problematisation again! Currently, I'm looking at a structure that will allow me to discuss about Clean Energy as a topic, or I will be choosing on a specific kind of energy source to talk about. However if i choose the latter, it would most probably be on Biofuels as it will allow me to expand the most due to its wide variety of options. Another possible topic would be on creative alternative energy, like vibrating batteries, energy from your sewage and so on.

Too many aritcles! Don't know where to start!

Good day to all!

Well it has been a struggle to find a SUJA topic from day one since I'm no that kind of Science student whereby I can get myself interested into typical science topics relating to fields of Chemistry, Physics or Life Sciences. All the jargons and concepts would have simply put me off.

Therefore, in order for me to write some 3000 word essay on a topic I believed that it was necessary for me to get a topic which is related to me or everyday life. I deduced that the only option I had would be to go into the Popular Science Genre.

The first thing that came to mind was Gambling, while I was on a game of Texas Holdem on Facebook :). It is common believe that in a game of Poker, what matters would be 'Poker Skill - deception and etc' and lastly your luck! However recently, the scene was disrupted by a group of unorthodox players; players whom rely on Mathematics. According to 11-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, 'these guys are changing everything'. Indeed, this 'attack of the Math Brats' is causing a phenomenon, and with online Poker on the rise, it leads me to thinking whether Mathematics can really make all of us a winner? Discussing about Poker alone would not be enough I suppose, so I have decided to delve in Gaming(casino) and bookmaking as a whole.

However, the ability to problematise is a headache. Everything in Math is true if and only if its an ideal world. Sadly, the real world is not an ideal world. When we say there is a 3/1 chance of you winning it may imply that you have a 1 in 3 chance to win. So for every 3 bets I place I would win one. Is this always true in real life? There are many variables that we have to factor in including skills and luck. Nothing in this world is perfect.

Further in bookmaking, I understand that the bookmakers have a set of formulas to give them the edge over the punters. For example, in a bet with only 2 options, the odds given might be 9/10 per bet, giving them a 10% edge. Ideally this means for every $1000 of stake the bookmaker would win $100! Good deal eh? But in Bookmaking, it gets even more complicated as its not simple odds in our way, but also the player's skill levels, or even weather and pitch conditions! It makes it very interesting for us if we could understand the logic behind all these. We have to note though that information in this field is most of the time very sensitive and might be a chore to gather them.

A general topic for this would be, "Gaming and Bookmaking - Mathematics or luck?". But I would need inputs to see if this is viable.

Cheerios

Eugene