2011-07-28
Explanation
This comic presents three panels comparing how different people approach gambling. A "Normal Person" happily exclaims "Hooray, gambling!" at a casino, blissfully unaware of the odds. A "Math Enthusiast" angrily lectures, "Gambling?! I guess you have no knowledge of statistics?!" -- representing the common refrain that anyone who understands probability would never gamble since the house always wins.
The punchline comes in the third panel, labeled "Mathematician," which shows someone who clearly has an advanced understanding of math also exclaiming "Hooray, gambling!" -- but this time carrying enormous stacks of chips and cash, having apparently cleaned out the casino. The joke subverts the math enthusiast's moralizing by suggesting that someone with truly deep mathematical knowledge would not simply avoid gambling but would instead find ways to exploit it (through card counting, finding edges in probability, or similar strategies). It pokes fun at the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" phenomenon: knowing just enough math makes you self-righteous about gambling, but knowing a lot of math makes you very good at it.