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Do The Math :
A mathematician's guide to the news.
We're Down $700 Billion. Let's Go Double or Nothing!
How the financial markets fell for a 400-year-old sucker bet.
Read more about Wall Street's ongoing crisis.
(Continued from Page 2)
Correction, Oct. 3, 2008: This piece originally misstated how many coin flips you would have to get wrong to lose $204,700 using the martingale betting strategy. It is 11, not 10. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
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Jordan Ellenberg is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin. His book How Not To Be Wrong is forthcoming. He blogs at Quomodocumque.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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