P(Contemplative) ^ P(Healthy) = .98

Lately I've been pondering all sorts of ways I could become rich and famous using statistics.

My first idea was to become the actuary of the monasteries. I have no idea how monasteries handle their health care needs, but I could do a monster survey, taking into account everything that is cool about all the different types of monks (contemplative/active, eat meat/don't eat meat, sleep/don't sleep, wear the habit/don't wear the habit) and statistically determine how much money these monasteries ought to save for health care expenses! Unfortunately I don't think monasteries are looking for elaborate mathematics to ensure health... they're too cool to care about such things.

But then I figured that I could write a news column. Everybody loves a witty news column right? Each week I would go out on the streets with a tape recorder, and ease-drop on people's conversations, and later record different aspects of their speech. For instance, while sitting at the lunch table I often hear about the excessive drinking habits of the friends of those sitting around me. I would mathematically show (to put some teeth behind the decidedly light commentary) that students here are more likely to use the word "fucked up" or "trashed" to describe an inebriated friend than simply "drunk". Of course I'd have to insert a good quantity of wit into the whole thing, but I would show how it is that these students seem to be enamored with destruction and ruin. Perhaps the surprisingly well-written and well-balanced newspaper on campus will have more interest in me than the Carmelites.

Unfortunately I didn't come up with this idea, but another genius did: over at CentSports.com they give you 10 cents for signing up to their sports gambling website. You get the 10 cents completely free, and when you get $20 you can cash out your money. The idea is genius when you consider the math involved (the study of risks: actuarial science!). See, the 10 cents doesn't actually exist. The company could have absolutely no money in their bank account when they started, and give out 10 cents to the whole world. It's only by time that the user multiplies his money 200 times that he can get a single cent out of the company. How prone is the company to a freak sports event? How many clicks (advertising money) does it take to win your $20? How many users will stop using the website after a while, turning their clicks into pure profit? The math behind this would be wonderful!