OT maybe a tax on stupid people....but

My grammar/ spelling stinks, English is my second language too. ('mer-can is my first :^)

George H.

I figured most mathematicians could actually read. ?? On

Maybe I'm missing something?

Anyway, I figured out what I'd do with all that money. I'd buy a couple handguns and a few thousand rounds of ammo and sneak them into Australia for Sloman to fondle, then sit back and wait for comment. :)

You don't have to know the details of a perpetual motion machine to know it won't work. Some aspects of general knowledge trump what appears to be true of particular situations, and you don't have to know the details of the particular situation to know it.

Tough. I can live with that.

You don't seem to have processed that caveat, which does diminish my faith in the reliability of your posts.

I'd have to report you to firearms authorities, who take a dim view of people who clandestinely ship guns to people in Australia who haven't got a license to own them.

The examples that make the headlines involve people from the Middle East.

I've certainly handled and fired rifles. Target shooting would appeal to me, but it wrecks your hearing, even with proper ear-protectors.

Hand guns don't fit my ideas of fondle-fodder. Phil Alison is even more irrascible than I am, and might find a use for a hand-gun or two.

The chance that I'll die tomorrow is a good deal higher than 1 in 200,000.

I'm 75, and Australian life expectancy calculators give me another 12.1 years, or 4416 days. I'm more likely to die on any given day as I get older, but even halving my risk for tomorrow - down one in 9,000 - is a lot worse than one in 200,000.

Recalculating my life expectancy as if I were 87 pushes the number down to 5.4 years, so halving the current risk is probably in the right ball-park.

I'm picky because wrong words make reading more difficult. At least misspelled words trigger an interrupt (or are ignored altogether).

I'm a bit surprised at you, George. Educated people do not usually throw their money away like that.

You gonna cast them from solid gold or something?

Get me a couple solid gold handguns and I'll become a firearms enthusiast real quick! Don't worry. I'll take good care of them...

One could construct a long list of things educated people don't do amalgamated from the opinions of many educated people, and you could stop doing all of them. the only downside would be if you objectively evaluated your lifestyle afterwards you'd find you were a strange autistic-like person who nobody like or want to be around after you finished removing all the "dead weight."

The best one of all was the Irish Lottery which by bad design had far too many smaller prizes making it possible for a syndicate that bet on almost every permutation to make money virtually risk free.

It is only worthwhile on a super jackpot and predicated on the lottery designers being more than a bit thick. It has since been fixed. They

tickets all up were selling 15x that amount in half a day.

It makes sense as long as you bet on numbers like 123456 or (if the numbers are in 8 columns) 1,9,17,25,33,41.

You know those numbers won't win, and you should also know they have the same chance as any others. Now add that up.

First, pay tax.

I've heard that argument before. So then bet on numbers like 123456 or (if the numbers are in 8 columns) 1,9,17,25,33,41.

You know those numbers won't win, and you should also know they have the same chance as any others. Now add that up.

But you really should bet on those, because no one else will. Then you have a greater chance of winning the whole thing and not having to share.

One smart winner formed a corporation and gave it the ticket, then had a lawyer collect the check. He remained anonymous.

Bad idea to include any number under 12. 13 is suitably unpopular. Square numbers are similarly too popular as is 42.

There is some merit in choosing unpopular numbers and avoiding those in the range 1 to 31 since many sucker bets are made on peoples birthdays.

You don't increase your chances of winning a jackpot by choosing the higher numbers but you significantly reduce your chances of sharing it.

I'd rather share $1.6 billion than nothing:)

That is to die in an unexpected accidental injury.

The statistical odds for dying of natural causes on any given day are in the ballpark of days in a year x remaining life expectancy.

So approx 360x80 ~= 1:29000 is about right at birth (assuming you survive the first week).

(the odds get shorter the older you become)

Actuarial tables provide probability of death in any given year as a function of age. Divide by 400 to get the daily risk of death.

They are also very much worse for people with underlying morbidity related medical conditions like hypertension, obesity or diabetes.

I like to compare the chances of winning the UK lottery jackpot vs dying while the balls are in motion.

But if punters are aware they are buying a (short-lived) dream, that's their business.

On the rare occasions I do play I tell the clerk at my local store that if they never see me again it's probably safe to assume what happened, keep an eye on your mailbox though I'm not cheap.

They usually say "Wow! Fantastic! Bon Voyage I sure hope I don't!" which I guess feels a little bad, but oh well :)

the interesting question is....

do you choose to join into the office lottery pool or not...

you have to because you don't want to risk being the only one that has to show up for work the day after the numbers are pulled.

:-)

mark