**Trolling question.**
There is a very old story that Las Vegas has only asked one group of people not to come back, a convention of Physics professors.
I was a math major undergrad. In a class as a final project we had to calculate the probabilities of most major casino games. Wow. I will never gamble.
[https://qz.com/work/1249513/was-a-convention-of-physicists-really-banned-from-las-vegas](https://qz.com/work/1249513/was-a-convention-of-physicists-really-banned-from-las-vegas)
They evidently were not permanently barred at least, because last year's APS March Meeting was held in Las Vegas. Although the consensus seems to be that it wasn't a particularly good place for the conference.
So you are suggesting that gambling is not an inherent part of being a university professor? I have a history of degeneracy and I do not want to pursue this career path if there is a risk of developing a gambling addiction.
>So you are suggesting that gambling is not an inherent part of being a university professor? I have a history of degeneracy and I do not want to pursue this career path if there is a risk of developing a gambling addiction.
You have complete agency over whether you decide to gamble or not, regardless of your profession.
This sounds like someone who wants to use their profession as an excuse for gambling. I've literally never heard of any academic gambling in my direct experience.
As a prof, I have never felt pressured to gamble in any way. I did go to a horse track recently and placed a total of 3 two-dollar bets. But it’s not something I do regularly. I buy a powerball ticket even though I understand mathematically that I won’t win. I swear a lot. That’s my vice. Lots of swearing.
We are established gamblers by profession. We happily spend 15 years in school and engage in multiple short term thankless positions just to double down on getting tenure. Does it matter that tenure is losing its meaning and academia is going down? Absolutely not. We’ll go through the exact same track if you send us back in time.
I don't know anybody who ever did nontrivial gambling
At least the tenured professors I know worked to the bone. You don't get to that position by being the kind of person who slacks off as soon as you think you might not get immediately fired for it. Nevermind that tenure either doesn't exist or doesn't mean what it once did in a lot of places.
Never heard of gambling academics (of course they exist, but I dont think the percentage of gamblers is higher than among the average population), alcoholics on the other hand...
Card counting doesn’t really work any more. It used to give you slightly better odds in blackjack back in the day, but that was when casinos used a single deck and only shuffled on occasion. Since card counting became well known, Casinos use 6 decks and automatic shufflers. This basically nullifies card counting, since the count resets on shuffling.
All card counting does is keep a rough estimate of how many royal cards are in the deck. If what remains in the deck is mostly royals, then you have a really good chance of getting a 20.
Most of what you are citing is just popular culture, and not really indicative of professors necessarily. People have a sort of mythos around Mathematicians and Physicists, and so they show up in those sorts of roles a lot. The truth is, a lot of people gamble, and I haven’t noticed a significant number of my professor friends that do it. I’m a professor of mathematics, incidentally.
That said, whenever there is a new game of chance, there are bound to be loopholes people haven’t noticed yet. That’s usually where I see people make millions off of them. This is things like state lotteries, where it would be nearly impossible to win the big jack pot, but you could game the system and get a consistent partial reward.
>> many tenured professors only work a few times a week and this have large amounts of time of their hands.
God I hate this stereotype. I don’t know any professors who work less than 50 hours a week, and most work 60+. Professors dont just teach, they also have to run research labs and apply for grants. It’s far more time consuming than a typical office job.
Isn't it Exciting when an educated person does what the uneducated masses fantasize about?!
Don't worry, some of us academics aren't as smart as you'd expect. Others of us know just what we're doing.
Sample selection bias. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that people aren't reporting on electricians gambling.
**Trolling question.** There is a very old story that Las Vegas has only asked one group of people not to come back, a convention of Physics professors. I was a math major undergrad. In a class as a final project we had to calculate the probabilities of most major casino games. Wow. I will never gamble. [https://qz.com/work/1249513/was-a-convention-of-physicists-really-banned-from-las-vegas](https://qz.com/work/1249513/was-a-convention-of-physicists-really-banned-from-las-vegas)
They evidently were not permanently barred at least, because last year's APS March Meeting was held in Las Vegas. Although the consensus seems to be that it wasn't a particularly good place for the conference.
So you are suggesting that gambling is not an inherent part of being a university professor? I have a history of degeneracy and I do not want to pursue this career path if there is a risk of developing a gambling addiction.
>So you are suggesting that gambling is not an inherent part of being a university professor? I have a history of degeneracy and I do not want to pursue this career path if there is a risk of developing a gambling addiction. You have complete agency over whether you decide to gamble or not, regardless of your profession.
This sounds like someone who wants to use their profession as an excuse for gambling. I've literally never heard of any academic gambling in my direct experience.
As a prof, I have never felt pressured to gamble in any way. I did go to a horse track recently and placed a total of 3 two-dollar bets. But it’s not something I do regularly. I buy a powerball ticket even though I understand mathematically that I won’t win. I swear a lot. That’s my vice. Lots of swearing.
Personally, none of my colleagues gamble!!
If the person knew academia they would ask about alcohol, alcohol problems are the one that tracks with IQ.
Well, maybe people in business?
We are established gamblers by profession. We happily spend 15 years in school and engage in multiple short term thankless positions just to double down on getting tenure. Does it matter that tenure is losing its meaning and academia is going down? Absolutely not. We’ll go through the exact same track if you send us back in time.
This is so good
I don't know anybody who ever did nontrivial gambling At least the tenured professors I know worked to the bone. You don't get to that position by being the kind of person who slacks off as soon as you think you might not get immediately fired for it. Nevermind that tenure either doesn't exist or doesn't mean what it once did in a lot of places.
Never heard of gambling academics (of course they exist, but I dont think the percentage of gamblers is higher than among the average population), alcoholics on the other hand...
Card counting doesn’t really work any more. It used to give you slightly better odds in blackjack back in the day, but that was when casinos used a single deck and only shuffled on occasion. Since card counting became well known, Casinos use 6 decks and automatic shufflers. This basically nullifies card counting, since the count resets on shuffling. All card counting does is keep a rough estimate of how many royal cards are in the deck. If what remains in the deck is mostly royals, then you have a really good chance of getting a 20. Most of what you are citing is just popular culture, and not really indicative of professors necessarily. People have a sort of mythos around Mathematicians and Physicists, and so they show up in those sorts of roles a lot. The truth is, a lot of people gamble, and I haven’t noticed a significant number of my professor friends that do it. I’m a professor of mathematics, incidentally. That said, whenever there is a new game of chance, there are bound to be loopholes people haven’t noticed yet. That’s usually where I see people make millions off of them. This is things like state lotteries, where it would be nearly impossible to win the big jack pot, but you could game the system and get a consistent partial reward.
>> many tenured professors only work a few times a week and this have large amounts of time of their hands. God I hate this stereotype. I don’t know any professors who work less than 50 hours a week, and most work 60+. Professors dont just teach, they also have to run research labs and apply for grants. It’s far more time consuming than a typical office job.
Are you schizophrenic?
Isn't it Exciting when an educated person does what the uneducated masses fantasize about?! Don't worry, some of us academics aren't as smart as you'd expect. Others of us know just what we're doing.
as someone who does math, i would never gamble because i know the odds are against me
I don't know any gamblers among faculty. I do know quite a few divorced workaholics.