Fandom High School

"So I feel like we haven't done enough discussion lately," Atton said.

He had not at all decided on this topic purely because it was cold, or because he'd gotten rained on by candy this morning and he was grumpy about it. Nope.

"Chance is, at the end of the day, about uncertainty," he said. "How certain is it that one thing happens over another? It's rarely a hundred percent chance anything will happen. Anyone on the mainland would tell you that it could never possibly rain candy out of the sky, but look--"

He waved towards the window. "...There we go. Now, I can't speak for all species, but humans don't handle uncertainty well. We want our chances to be 100% in our corner - or at least 100% on us. Even people blaming themselves for stuff they can't control, that's about trying to minimize uncertainty: it's gotta be something you did. Or didn't do. The odds were in your hands, not at the whims of fate."

He shrugged. "That's not actually how it works," he said. "So today I just want to open up a broad discussion. How do you deal with uncertainty? Not knowing if the chances are in your favor? Knowing they're not, but wanting to push it anyway? Do you deal well with not knowing, or does it drive you nuts at night? It's stuff like that that should inform when you take a chance, and how."

With that, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a marzipan apple, and bit into it.

"I was going to take you to the horse races today to talk about bookies and odds, doing your research to know which odds are both smart and profitable, yadda yadda yadda," Atton said.

He waved vaguely at the field full of villagers cheering on four chickens running across the field.

"Obviously," he said, "Someone's gotten into the simulator again."

He didn't know why he expected any better, at this point. "So what the hell, let's go with this," he said. "Do your research. Pick a chicken to bet on. Let's see which one of you actually knows how to play the odds right."

"Today, we're getting into the nitty-gritty of calculating odds," Atton said. "None of that gut feeling stuff here. We're going to be talking percentages." He walked from table to table, putting down handouts of... sums.

Yep, kids. You were getting an actual math class.

"The thing about odds is that the math doesn't always work as you expect it to," he said. "If you flip a coin once, what's the chance you'll get heads? 50 percent. If you flip it ten times, what's the chance you'll get heads? Still 50 percent. Even if you flip it heads seven times in a row, the chance for the next toss is still 50 percent, because it could be one or the other."

He sat back down behind his desk.

"Percentages are always out of 100," he said, "Which means you can also write them down as fractions of 1. A chance of 0.2 out of 1 is the same as a 20 percent chance. So an easy way to calculate chance is to add up to one hundred. What's the percentage chance if you're talking 7 out of 25? Well, 25 times four adds up to 100, so seven times four - 28 percent."

He shrugged. "It's that easy," he said. "Now get to work."

"Right, do or die time," Atton said, clapping his hands. He was standing in front of three doors. "Pick a door, get through the scenario, come out the other end. That's it. That's the class."

He jabbed his thumb towards the doors. "Safeties are on. Scram."

"So, you guys just had your parents to deal with, so let's make this week's class nice and easy," Atton said.

He put down a pazaak deck. "You remember this game. You also remember we're supposed to be talking about dealing with odds that are stacked against you these next few weeks. So I want those of you who aren't great at gambling to find someone in here you know is better at it than you. Play against them. Think about the moves they're making. Why are they making them?"

He shrugged. "As for those of you who are already good at it," he said, "Have fun. There's free nachos."

"So, today we're actually going to talk about risk and reward," Atton said.

As was evidenced by the fact they were in a normal classroom, for once. "We've had a chance to try out a few card games, we've had a chance to try out how you'd act in a real world situation. And we'll go through many other scenarios like this in the future. But it all starts with the same question: when do you take a gamble? How much are you willing to gamble? And what are you willing to gamble for?"

He watched the class.

"I have a pretty good gut feeling," he said. "I've had to develop one. There are risks worth taking, but risking your life-- that should be a choice you think about. A lot. And so for a very long time, I decided that risking my life was the one thing I wasn't willing to do. Before that, I'd been a soldier. I'd thought that fighting and dying so my people could live-- that was the right choice to make. Because what was the stake of my life, really, in the face of potentially billions of more deaths?" He snorted. "Of course, I was a teenager, so I also thought I was immortal. At first. I got over that pretty quickly."

He sat down. "After that, I decided to say screw it. The war had been won. There was nothing left to do but survive. I had nothing to stake my life for, and so I figured what I should be doing was making sure every gamble I took was one that would make my life a little better, at the risk of making it a little worse. That was all. It worked. Again, for a while. Turns out I'm still not good at saying 'no' when universe-saving is on the menu, especially if the menu is being served by a pretty girl in her underwear."

Go figure.

"This week's class will be our first discussion class," he said. "I want you all to pitch in on this question. Argue with each other if you have to. The question is: what would you risk your life for? What's worth that kind of stake?"

When students entered the Danger Shop, they would find... a large forest, spread out next to an impressive mountain range to the east and a large river to the west.

"I hate to break it to all of you, but we're not going to be playing Go Fish all semester."

Sorry not sorry.

"This class is about gambling and probability in all its many and usually incredibly dangerous forms," Atton continued. "Like, say, in a survival situation. When you're stuck by yourself traveling through dangerous territory, you have to take constant risks, deciding in the moment what risk is worth what reward. Today, we're going to give your instincts a workout. Both so I can tell how far along you are, and because it's good to stretch your brain every now and again."

And your legs. Definitely your legs.

"I want each of you to take three of these tokens," he said, holding up a green circle made of cardboard. "Each one of these represents a ration. Food. Stuff you need to not die. You keep all three of these, you'll be comfortable. You lose all of them, you're dead. But you can't sit on your rations forever, because they're finite. Enter your escape route."

He gestured towards the imposing landscape behind them.

"Each one of these roads is set up with a probability matrix behind it," he said. "You can choose to take the river; outside of some rapids, you'll probably be safe there. So it will only cost you two of your rations, unless you're unlucky. See, you have a 65% chance to catch a fish, which would let you keep one of your ration tokens. If you don't, though? You're out of luck. Dead."

He put down one of the ration tokens. "You could, of course, take the forest instead," he said. "Plenty of food there. Berries and so on. So you could make it through with all of your tokens. But it's also full of monkeys. And it's a big forest. So there's three cases where there's a 33% probability a monkey will come and steal one of your rations."

He put down another token. "Finally, you've got the mountains," he said. "Dangerous territory. Thankfully, you're not the only one it's dangerous for. There's a dead goat up top, ready to be gutted and turned into more rations. You could walk out with each one of these tokens still in your pocket." He put down the last one. "But your actual chances of making it up there without dying - or in our case, losing all of your tokens - is 35%. So... not so good."

He shrugged. "The Danger Shop's programmed with these numbers," he said. "Safeties are on, you're not in actual danger, yadda yadda, there's one slice of pizza for every token you have left at the end. Go."