# The Newtonian Casino

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-newtonian-casino/44173
**Category:** Offtopic
**Created:** [August 3, 2020, 7:22am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-newtonian-casino/44173 "2020-08-03T07:22:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![johnh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/johnh/32/3615_2.png) [@johnh](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/johnh)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2020, 7:22am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-newtonian-casino/44173/1 "2020-08-03T07:22:24Z")

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I would recommend the book The Eudamonic Pie to everyone here. Published as the Newtonian Casino in the UK. It is a thrilling tale of hackers who go to Vegas with computers concealed in their shoes.  
I cannot help but think of todasy equivalent - Jetson Nanos running on battery packs. Running models in Julia which use ML and differentiable programming to predict the motion of that roulette ball.

ps. Don’t do it in real life. As the book relates you’ll probably find yourself in a dumpster in an alley behind the casino, a bit worse for wear. And it is illegal.

> **[The Eudaemonic Pie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie)**
>
> The Eudaemonic Pie is a non-fiction book about gambling by American author Thomas A. Bass. The book was initially published in April 1985 by Houghton Mifflin.
> The book focuses on a group of University of California, Santa Cruz, physics graduate students (known as the Eudaemons) who in the late 1970s and early 1980s designed and employed miniaturized computers, hidden in specially modified platform soled shoes, to help predict the outcome of casino roulette games. The players knew, presumably ...

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### Author: ![johnh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/johnh/32/3615_2.png) [@johnh](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/johnh)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2020, 7:25am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-newtonian-casino/44173/2 "2020-08-03T07:25:14Z")

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ps. I dont think our Jetson Nano needs a camera and visual recognition software. From what I remember of the book you input the ending number of the roulette ball, or maybe the first number it ends in.  
Over time you can build up a model of the ‘skewness’ of the individual wheel. Roulette actually being invented as a fair game of course, but each wheel has subtle differences.

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### Author: ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2020, 12:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-newtonian-casino/44173/3 "2020-08-03T12:53:15Z")

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> [@johnh](#):
>
> Roulette actually being invented as a fair game of course

I am not sure about this, AFAIK all bets have a slightly negative expected value (mostly because of zeros).

> **[Roulette | Bet odds table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roulette#Bet_odds_table)**
>
> The expected value of a $1 bet (except for the special case of Top line bets), for American and European roulette, can be calculated as

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### Author: ![johnh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/johnh/32/3615_2.png) [@johnh](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/johnh)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2020, 12:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-newtonian-casino/44173/4 "2020-08-03T12:58:12Z")

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Yes indeed. I should have said - roulette is a fair game if the numbers are 1:36  
However the wheel has 0 (or two 0) and when the ball lands there the house takes everything.  
I think that is correct - I’m probably not understanding some details.
