First off, I have no interest in being a mathematician. Math was always and continues to be quite difficult for me.
So, as an outsider to advanced math, it blows my mind that there are people who’s entire job title is mathematician. How does that work? What does a mathematician do?
I very briefly had a job as a mathematician for a company that certifies pokies (slot machines). I was technically also a software dev, but my job mainly consisted of calculating the theoretical average returns for each machine, writing basic code to simulate the machine for millions of games and then making sure those two numbers matched. I’d pass that on to a physical testing team who hack them to run real games.
It was a horrible fucking job and I got out basically a month after I finished my training. All we did was prove the machines were exactly as profitable as allowed in whatever location they were going to be deployed at…
Now I work as a regular software developer and it’s also a horrible job.
So… How profitable were they?
It depends on the region, we were certifying globally. I don’t remember the numbers that well, it was years ago and I only did a few months there, but I think it’s something like a 98% return for the player, so if you put $1 in, you get 0.98¢ back on average.