1) The "Freakonomics" book has some good examples I think. [Sumo wrestling fixing, real estate agent incentives (they tend to keep their own houses on the market much longer than they do their client's houses) ] 2) Ponzi schemes 3) How much would you pay your neighbor for his $125 million winning Powerball ticket? 4) Money laundering, check kiting, fringe banking, electronic check deposit rules and rights of recission, etc, all of these have interesting stories behind them of scams that people tried at one point or another that bankers responded to with some sort of combined mathematical/rule making response. When large sums have to be paid businesses will go extreme lengths to collect even one day of additional interest (dropping off checks at precisely closing time to obscure offices--"hey, we paid according the contract! you just didn't cash the check!" ) stories like these might motivate people to actually listen to the drone about paying attention to interest rates. Thane Plambeck http://www.plambeck.org/ehome.htm James Propp wrote:
I'm teaching a course on quantitative reasoning for an audience of nearly two hundred math-averse students, and one of the ways I'm hoping to "sell the product" to them is to pitch the course as a kind of self-defense art that helps you not get ripped off by used car dealers, cell-phone companies, credit-card companies, banks, etc.
For instance, I'll talk about the scam wherein the scammer sends free investment advice to 1024 people (half of whom get one piece of advice and half of whom get a conflicting piece of advice), then sends free advice to the 512 who got good advice on the first round (again splitting his advice half-and-half), then sends free advice to 256 people, and so on, and finally starts to ask a small number of people to pay a lot of money, hoping that they'll reason that someone who's been right so often must be onto something.
I'll also show the class the grifting scene in "Paper Moon".
Can any of you think of other good mathematical cons, or good resources for finding out about them?
("Ricky Jay's Big Book of Math Hustles" would be perfect if such a book existed!)
Jim
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