The Impossible Question

[Frank Kneeland]

< ="text/">p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }

The Impossible Question

You're in Las Vegas for a three day
vacation. It's about five o'clock in the afternoon of your second day
in Vegas. You saunter into your hotel room whereupon your significant
other asks you a simple question, “How are you doing today in the
casino?”. Your goal is to answer as truthfully as possible without
confabulation or obfuscation. There is no need to sugar coat the
truth or deceive, as you budgeted appropriately for the trip. You
simply need to answer the question accurately. Why should this be
difficult? Well, I'm getting to that.

Here's your data:

You arrived yesterday afternoon at 4PM
and played your favorite machine from 5PM-7PM until dinner time and
lost $200. After your stake dinner you resumed play on the same machine and
played for six hours straight, losing $600. However, during this six
hours of continuous play on the same machine the date changed halfway
through. Before midnight you were only down $200. After midnight you
lost an additional $400. At 4AM you went to bed for the night and
only slept 3 hours, returning to your machine at 8AM after a quick
breakfast. During this play session you made back +$100 and then,
still tired from your long night, decided to lie down for a quick
nap, which turned into 2 hours and fifty minutes. Upon rising from
your nap you again returned to your favorite machine and hit a Royal,
winning $700 after losses and a tip, before your date with destiny
and the impossible question your loved one was about to ask.

“How are you doing today in the
casino?”

Here's a list of the data points:
Afternoon first day = -200
After dinner before midnight -200
(part of continuous 6 hours session)
After midnight = -400 (part of
continuous 6 hours session)
After going to sleep for 3 hours =
+100
After 2 hour 50 min nap = +700


The obvious problem here is figuring
out when your “day” started. You did not go to bed before
midnight and get up in the morning, and so have two totally different
time scales working in opposition. You could use when you went to
sleep and when you got up as the start of your day. But if we are
using sleep as a determiner of when your day started, then your nap
was only ten minutes shorter than your “sleep for the night”.

Please list a single one sentence
numerical answer for the question.

Example: I'm up $X today honeybee.

Then list all your thought processes
and justify your answer in as much detail as you can muster.

There is no right or wrong answer to
the question itself; This is about the justifications.Hope this provokes some thought.~FK

[Eduardo]

Some valuable data missing before I can answer: what did I have for dinner?

[Frank Kneeland]

Some valuable data missing before I can answer: what did I have for dinner?Fixed

[backsider]

"I started out lousy as usual but then hit a royal and now Im up a few hundred for the day, love pot". At this point, theres no real clock for visitors to lv so its close enough to add it all up into being "today" so far. I know Im not up anything numericaly but I almost always lie about how Im doing no matter who I talk to. Make her feel ok, and to me it doesnt matter financially if I win or not because Im not losing anything I dont have.  I do feel the pain of losing though.

[Frank Kneeland]

"I started out lousy as usual but then hit a royal and now Im up a few hundred for the day, love pot". At this point, theres no real clock for visitors to lv so its close enough to add it all up into being "today" so far. I know Im not up anything numericaly but I almost always lie about how Im doing no matter who I talk to. Make her feel ok, and to me it doesnt matter financially if I win or not because Im not losing anything I dont have.  I do feel the pain of losing though.OK, so just to be clear, you are counting the entire trip as one day even though some of the results occurred before sleep and before midnight on a different calendar day?And you are doing this because for you the rules of normal time keeping do not apply when "we're in VEGAS baby".I think you are not alone in that regard.~FK

[backsider]

OK, so just to be clear, you are counting the entire trip as one day even though some of the results occurred before sleep and before midnight on a different calendar day?And you are doing this because for you the rules of normal time keeping do not apply when "we're in VEGAS baby".I think you are not alone in that regard.~FK
 Yes, 100%.

[brmcc74]

For me, there is not necessarily a day but a session or more. If I were to take $200 and lose it , then that session ended and I would have to get more $ to start a new one. The (up +700) at the time where I need to leave would just be added to the total vp life ledger to keep track of win/loss. Gambling is funny how you can win so much at times that its unbelievable, and then back to reality you cant split a dime.

[Frank Kneeland]

For me, there is not necessarily a day but a session or more. If I were to take $200 and lose it , then that session ended and I would have to get more $ to start a new one. The (up +700) at the time where I need to leave would just be added to the total vp life ledger to keep track of win/loss. Gambling is funny how you can win so much at times that its unbelievable, and then back to reality you cant split a dime.So you define and partition a session not by increment of time, calendar date or sleep pasterns, but by a fixed session bankroll. But then you add the desperate sessions into a running total. Just asking, but if you keep a running life log, why break your play into $200 sessions?I have heard of people who do one or the other, but not both.~FK

[OTABILL]

You broke even assuming it was winter and sundown was at 5:00 pm and you are following a jewish day which runs from sundown to sundown. LOL

[EDC1977]

  My reply would be even. Day/session breakdowns are far more involved than I make it. I add/subtract at the end of my trip including RFB. I try to break even coming from Ca.