Trigger warning: about to toot my own horn.
And a caveat. I screw up. I make mistakes. I’ve gone bankrupt once, been broke twice. I’m not now. What’s important is not the mistakes, it’s the lessons learned.
Paying for groceries, I’m adding the numbers upside down using my own approximation technique faster than checkout employee can scan. I say, “That’s … $39.60 … or thereabouts.” When the total comes to $39.69, the checkout girl looks at me like I’m from Mars. “How’d you do that?!”
I shrug. “I like numbers.”
My ex and I loved going on bookstore dates. She read autobiographies. Me? Math history, Feynman, Edward Thorp, maybe brush up on some probability theory. She just shook her head.
In business tech specs, efficiency ratios, wholesale volume discounts, I easily stated, “That’ll save you 20% or $2,300 a month and the ROI is 19 months.” Again: “How’d you do that?” For me, the numbers are just … there. Multiplication, division, percentages, they’re all just OBVIOUS, in some cases instantaneous.
When I became obsessed with roulette, spending 18 months in the NC State fifth-floor math library absorbing everything on nonlinear dynamics, recurrence and chaos theory, I just loved it. The daily lean into the right headspace often took 30 minutes, but it felt so good! Was it weird, composing a 45-page heuristic paper on Nonlinear Dynamic Short-Term Recurrence Theory applied to roulette, when I barely made it out of high school alive?
Every time I searched out someone to talk with, like folks working on weather prediction, they got real uncomfortable. “I have a Master’s and you left me behind 20 minutes ago.”
When I found my people, like Laurence Scott (roulette prediction) and Chuck Webber (recurrence theory), I was finally no longer the fishnerd looking for water. But it’s okay. Ask me about applying the birthday paradox to double wheel roulette and see me light up.
I like math. It’s clean, clear, concise. I like video poker for those reasons. I find the decision tree very relaxing. It massages my brain.
But when faced with craps, I freeze up. Too many chaotic variables, like the yahoo rolling, for starters. Craps is a good game; I’m just not made for that particular decision tree. Card counters are memory geeks, too. But again, I’m just not wired up for live action. I’m way too transparent to have to bluff and lie.
I believe my most valuable skill is recognizing opportunity before others, way before. Like energy-efficient lighting in the ’80s, LEDs in the ’90s, or specific Vegas-value plays. And applying them in creative ways.
When Mrs. Luttenton, my seventh-grade advanced math teacher, crammed trigonometry down our throats, we hated her. She was mean, demanding, and ugly. Apologies Mrs Luttenton, wherever you are. But thank you for being such a math drill sergeant.
And kids? Put away the phone and think.
Yes, I find math relaxing.
So sue me.