MONACO MATHEMATICS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19769, 17 February 1927, Page 8

MONACO MATHEMATICS

ROULETTE A STEADY BUSINESS LAW OF AVERAGES. Students of mathematics will tell you that every spin of a roulette wheel is an event distinct in itself and has absolutely nothing to do with spins before or afterwards. In Monaco there appears each week a journal known as “La Revue de Monte Carlo.’’ This paper is eagerly bought and studied by hundreds of hardened roulette, players along the Riviera. From cover to cover it contains nothing except page after page of neatly arranged figures in long parallel columns. These are the authentic records of the result of a week’s play from No. 2 roulette table. Their chief lesson is the fallacy of the idea that the spinning of this fascinating machine is an affair of fantastic chance. On glancing at a recent number of this paper, writes a “Daily Mail’’ contributor, one finds that the total number of coups for tho whole week was 4510. Of those spins 2201 were black and 2197 red, tho balance of 112 being, of course, the neutral zero. Evon numbers appeared 2206 times; odd, 2192 times. Tho law of averages is even more conclusively proved by the records of the appearances of the single numbers. Any one number ought to occur once in 37 spins, or roughly 125 times in. 4510; actually the figures given in the balance sheet show that the most favoured number came up 135 times and the most bashful 110. Of the remainder, 12 numbers occurred between 120 and 130 times. An average struck between the highest and the lowest works out at 125.7! Surely the lesson to bo drawn from all these figures is self-evident—-namely, that if all these chances work out their corect averages, so also will the Casino’s zero, or 3 per cent., continue to bring grist to the mill. Banking is a hazardous venture compared with the running of a roulette wheel.