I have made a few many ‘bad’ decisions in my life by badly estimating my odds or value.

Expected value can be calculated by: (odds of gain) x (value of gain)

An example of a time where I miscalculated my odds of gain was in Hong Kong at one of the carnivals games. To enter, you had to pay very little, the game seemed easy enough and my friend and I thought we had a solid chance since some kids were managing to win big prizes. But as soon as we paid, we realised how difficult it was and we only managed to get one ball in place to win a prize which was worth the same as what we had paid. Therefore, we paid for another round as we were set on winning something worthwhile. But we realised this didn’t increase our odds of winning, and we left paying much more for something which cost nothing in comparison. We also made an error in value of gain as we thought we would be leaving with a prize worth more than we paid but it ended up being the opposite…