Discover Top Posts Tagged with #fun with maths

If you play the lottery, you'd be better off playing all your tickets at once than buying one ticket a week for repeated weeks. Each week's draw is independent so if you lose one week then it has no impact on your odds of losing the next week.

But if you play multiple tickets at once, you can spread your number choices across the whole selection and each selection of 6 numbers that isn't the winner makes your odds slightly better than one of the other selections is the winner.

If you were to play the lottery once a week for a year, let's call that 52 weeks of playing a game with a 1 in 13983816 chance of winning.

P = 1 - (1 - 1/13983816)^52 = 0.00037185776%

But if you played 52 tickets all at once, the formula is just:

P = 52/13983816 = 0.00037185842%

Look, I never said that they were good odds, just that the chance was slightly higher than playing once a week.

I can't be bothered to work out the odds for a stupid tumblr post, but with the multiple tickets at once method, if you're sensible about spreading the numbers out as much as possible, there's going to be a point where you're pretty much guaranteed to win a couple of the lesser prizes (e.g. pick the correct 3 numbers).

#fun with maths

Adrian's oven broke so he came to borrow the crematorium furnace to bake the cake.

If you thought Adrian was the sane one in the relationship, you're sorely mistaken.

He scraped the unburnt bits from the destroyed cake tin, Escher grabbed flowers from the front desk, and they had a Valentione's lunch break.

Happy Valentione's, you godsdamned dorks.

#ffxiv #ffxiv screenshots #escher strange #adrian rose #pastel dorks #the cake was vanilla #If a cake requires 180C and an hour to bake #how long must it bake in a 750C furnace #fun with maths #ffxiv rp

Ms. Stoner’s Income

In The Speckled Band, which is my favourite Holmes story, Helen Stoner’s late mother left her daughters an annual income of 1100 Pounds. In today’s money that would be 171,121.15 Pounds or $204,507.74.

Due to falling agricultural prices, that fell to 750 Pounds, which today would be 116,673.51 Pounds or $139,437.10. This is how much Dr. Roylott was making annually with both Helen and Julia unmarried. Each girl was entitled to 250 Pounds a year upon marriage. This would be 38,891.17 Pounds or $46,479.03 today.

One marriage would bring Roylott down to 500 Pounds or 77,782.34 Pounds/ $92,958.06. Two would force him into the same income as both sisters. Either way, he’d be placed in the Lower Middle Class rather than Upper. He would definitely lose his lifestyle. Yet again, people in the Victorian Era Middle Class making more than I do.

#Sherlock Holmes #ACD Holmes #The Speckled Band #Helen Stoner #Julia Stoner #Dr Grimsby Roylott #Books #Victorian Era Middle Class #Fun with Maths #Letters From Watson #Money Talk #1883 #Victorian Era

Watson’s Army Pension and Baker Street Rent

In A Study in Scarlet (Which I think is supposed to take place in 1881?), Watson’s Army pension is 11 shillings and 6 pence a day. 1 Shilling is 12 Pence, thus Watson’s daily pay is 11.5 shillings. 1 Pound is 20 Shillings. 11.5 x 30 days (Average days in a month) is 345 Shillings a month. Divided by 20 is 17.25 Pounds a month. Times that by 12 months means that Watson met Holmes, his annual salary was about 207 Pounds. In today’s money, that’d be about 32,202 Pounds a year, about 619 Pounds a week, or 2,683.5 Pounds a month. Or about $38,470 a year, about $740 a week, and about $3,206 a month. Bonus: Both Holmes and Watson were in their twenties when they met. Hell, Holmes was still taking college classes. According to Murray's Handbook to London As It is, 1879, "’Elegantly furnished rooms’ in [the] West End” (Which is where Baker Street was) were between 4 to 15 Guineas a week. 207 Pounds a year is a little over 4 Pounds a week. 1 Guinea is 1 Pound and 1 Shilling. 11.5 Shillings x 7 days is 80.5 Shillings a week (Or 4 Pounds and a Sixpence a week), which is 3 Guineas, 19 Shillings, and a Sixpence a week. At minimum, Watson would probably spend about 2 Guineas on rent a week (If we go with the modern 33% of pay on rent rule of thumb). Going halves with Holmes would bring them right at the low end of the average West End weekly rent. Other factors would include how much Watson was actually willing to pay for rent vs his weekly salary, his increase in salary with the books sales and medical consultations, and if he and Holmes shared the money they got for solving cases. (We haven’t gotten there yet, but if the Granada series is to be believed, at one point Holmes is paid the Victorian equivalent of a little over a million dollars before it got doubled to about 2.5 million.) In later books, it sort of seems like Holmes takes over paying the whole rent (he was able to live in Baker Street alone when Watson got married, Watson sold his medical practice when he moved back in and he never had one when he lived at Baker Street). *Shrugs* If you ever wanted to know how much Holmes and Watson payed for rent it’d be about 2 - 7.5 Guineas or 1.05 - 7.88 Pounds a week a piece, which would be 163.34 - 1,225.85 Pounds or $195.13 - $1,464.46 a week a piece today. Most likely, their rent would be closer to the lower range. So, at minimum in today’s money, 163.34 Pounds a piece ($195.13 a week, $845.56 a month, and $10,146.76 a year) and 326.68 Pounds together per week. ($390.27 a week, $1,691.17 a month, $20,294.04 a year) In other words, at the least, in total they pay more than I do. Historically, the West End is not cheap. Go, Mrs. Hudson.

EDIT: Upon rechecking my figures, I was off on Doctor Watson’s annual income by about 2-3 pounds. Doesn’t really change much though. Also, in today’s money, Watson was making a little over $106 daily. Or almost 88 Pounds.