Can Maths Help You Win at Games?

Can Maths Help You Win at Games?

Can maths help you win at games?

In this AfterMaths Summer Special, Jon and Becky explore the line between luck and strategy — and whether understanding the maths behind a game can actually give you an advantage.

They take in Rock Paper Scissors, Noughts & Crosses, chess, a deceptively simple counting game, the chessboard-and-rice problem, expected value, roulette and the mathematics hiding inside Monopoly.

Along the way: why some apparently random games aren’t quite random, why exponential growth gets ridiculous remarkably quickly, why the house tends to win at casinos, and how a little probability might improve your chances during family game night.

Maths can’t guarantee that you’ll win every game.

But it might make people considerably less keen to play Monopoly with you.

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Episoder(90)

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