Reserved. I will finish when I can type on a real keyboard rather than on a smartphone.

But for those that can’t wait, the guts of my post is variance vs volatility, which are two different concepts but are related.

Jazbo wrote this article about 20 years ago: http://jazbo.com/videopoker/halflife.html

Keywords are: “ In video poker mail forums, the subject of "volatility" often comes up. But, unlike variance, volatility has no agreed upon definition. In this article, I discuss a mathematical notion that is well-defined ...” [video poker mail forum includes Skip Hughes’ popular forum].

We use Video Poker (because in class III machines) ... the math is known or can be solved for and then use it to explain it on slot machines. In summary, we use video poker to develop “theory” that helps us understand slot results based on established MATH and LOGIC and not dumb comment(s) Mickey Crimm likes to throw around.

For some of us who went to college and had to sit through Intro to Statistics, we know what Variance is ... aka dispersion amongst the mean. And some with much higher IQ’s (not me) can use methods of the moments to explain a normal distribution or other distributions. A lot of us can measure variance because we had to get a passing grade in the course.

I run attribution reports (from the investment industry) so I get a feel for the numbers. Do you think Mickey Crimm was ever tested on the CFA level 3 (or any CFA) exam about attribution analysis or reports? I think not.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a...n-analysis.asp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_attribution

In a nutshell, attribution analysis is trying to understand the actual results from benchmarked results (here, expected results in advantage play situations).

My advice for Mickey Crimm is to stick to the tried and true and just say: Guy lost money on the play because he got unlucky.