Winning Bets with Math: and additional curiosities

Werner Joho

Mar 2018 · BoD – Books on Demand

About this ebook

Here are some examples of how you can tempt your friends to accept attractive-looking bets. But mathematical analysis shows that these bets are unfair. Mathematical tricks and curiosities are presented like: the magic number 70 in exponential growth; how to estimate the birth-and mortality rate in your town; why the best team does not always win; the famous TV-Show of Monty Hall with the car and the two goats behind three doors; the story behind the fairy tales of the 1'001 Arabian nights; why the last judgment occurs in 800 years; etc. Finally there is a long list of easy and difficult riddles.

About the author

Werner Joho was born in Baden, Switzerland and lives now close to Baden. He studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute (ETHZ) in Zurich and later got there his PHD. He worked first on the large Proton Cyclotron, which produces with 1.4 MW the largest beam power, world wide. Later he was involved with the Swiss Light Source (SLS), an electron storage ring, producing high quality X-rays. He spent some time at other accelerator facilities, like CERN, MSU in Michigan, TRIUMF in Vancouver Canada and Berkeley, California.