A gambling parlay is a bet where two or more things have to happen. Will you have coffee and eggs for breakfast is less likely—thus longer odds and higher payout–than just betting on one or the other.
And people love betting parlays. The most popular Super Bowl bet is the coin toss, and Americans bet seven billion dollars (legally) on the game.
And casinos love people betting parlays. According to UNLV, sports books earn five percent on bets, except for parlays. On those bets casinos take 30%.
Why do bettors do so poorly? It’s a little too much psychology and a little too little numeracy. Bettors, said Rufus Peabody, love to bet for things to happen. It’s easier to imagine one outcome than all outcomes. It’s why the ‘no safety’ bet almost always has positive EV.
Bettors also don’t consider the numbers in the right light. Two independent seventy percent events only both occur half the time. Let’s run with that.
According to smart air filters, a t-shirt-mask will stop 70% of an airborne bacteria which is smaller than the coronavirus. That’s good. But what if we parlay masks?
If I wear a mask a t-shirt-mask and you wear a t-shirt mask we’ve reduced the viral load ten-fold. Thirty-percent of thirty-percent is .09.
The same math that makes parlays good for Vegas and bad for gamblers is what makes masks good for all of us.
I wore mine to the store for the first time. It felt kinda foolish. But then I did the math.
UNLV explains the casino win percentage as “Win percentage, or win as a percentage of drop, AKA hold percentage, the percentage of money wagered that the casino kept.”
Peabody also tweeted about this:
The Waiter's Pad 
[…] to see if ideas pass the sniff test. We have to think about how survivor explains sampling, and consider gambling parlays. We have to be mathematically […]
LikeLike