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Test tells how much smoking has aged sperm
NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Beat bookies with their own odds historical data to work out the optimal distance from the mean odds – the one that would give a positive payout for the largest number of games. In a simulation, their strategy made a return of 3.5 per cent –
THE chances of making a profit by betting on football matches, say, are extremely low in the long run. Now a trio of researchers has managed to beat the odds with a simple formula. Mathematicians had already developed bookie-beating models that attempt to predict sporting outcomes, but they are hard to devise and don’t perform consistently. So Lisandro Kaunitz at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues tried a more direct approach: using the bookmakers’ odds against them. The team studied data on nearly half a million football matches and the associated odds offered by 32 bookmakers between January 2005 and June 2015. For every game, the trio looked for odds that might yield a better return than the average offered by bookies – say, 5 to 1 versus a mean of 2 to 1. Mean odds of 2 to 1 suggest the bookies collectively think this reflects fair odds for that outcome. But 5 to 1 offers higher returns should the outcome materialise. The team used the
Test tells how much smoking has aged sperm A SPERM age calculator can tell men how “old” their sperm is, revealing changes caused by smoking. While a woman’s age has long been known to affect the health of her offspring, we have only recently begun to understand how a father’s age can have similar effects. Older dads seem to pass on health risks via epigenetic tags on the DNA in their
MATTHEW LLOYD/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Chris Baraniuk
sperm. These tags alter how active genes are, and can themselves be altered by ageing, diet and smoking. Tim Jenkins at the University of Utah and his colleagues have studied the sperm of 350 men, looking for these genetic switches. So far, they have found changes at 147 points in the genome that seem linked to age. The team have now created a “calculator” that assesses the state of the DNA at these 147 sites. Their analysis can predict a man’s age with 95 per cent accuracy, and identify whether his sperm have aged prematurely.
beating random bets, which resulted in a loss of 3.32 per cent. So the trio decided to try it in the real world. They developed an online tool to apply their oddsaveraging formula to upcoming football matches. For five months, they placed $50 bets around 30 times a week. It worked. The team made a profit of $957.50, or an 8.5 per cent return (arxiv.org/abs/1710.02824). But the streak was cut short. Following a series of small wins,
the trio were surprised to find limits imposed on their accounts, restricting how much they could bet to as little as $1.25. A spokesperson for William Hill, one of the bookmakers the team used, said such measures are sometimes used. The gambling industry has long restricted players who appear to show an edge over the house, says Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University, UK. A classic example is card-counting – mentally noting the cards already played – which can help players win at blackjack. Casinos are quick to expel those who try it, but it is not illegal in the US or the UK. Griffiths compares the team’s approach to card-counting. “It’s not cheating at all – it’s using mathematics to try and beat a particular system,” he says. Online bookmakers sometimes briefly offer generous odds on certain matches to lure automated or expert betting systems into the open, says economist David Forrest at the University of Liverpool, UK. “Anyone who responds has their account closed.” The researchers may have fallen foul of this. In some cases they found they could not bet at all after signing up with certain bookies. This suggests their technique really was finding the best odds out there. But the house –Look at the odds, not the sport– still always wins in the end. n
Jenkins and his colleagues find that smokers have much older-looking sperm. “For a 40-year-old man who smokes, our calculator would calculate him to be 44 or so,” says Jenkins, who will present his findings at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, this month. The researchers don’t yet know if these changes are responsible for
“For a 40-year-old man who smokes, our spermbased calculator would deem him to be 44 or so”
the increased chance of autism and schizophrenia in the children of older men, but Michael Carroll at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, suspects this is the case. “The emphasis on smoking has always been on the mother’s side,” says Carroll. “But it’s becoming more evident that exposures in men can alter health.” Because sperm is produced throughout a man’s life, there’s a chance that men with old sperm might be able to reverse some of the damage, says Carroll. Jessica Hamzelou n 21 October 2017 | NewScientist | 17
Beat bookies with their own odds historical data to work out the optimal distance from the mean odds – the one that would give a positive payout for the largest number of games. In a simulation, their strategy made a return of 3.5 per cent –
THE chances of making a profit by betting on football matches, say, are extremely low in the long run. Now a trio of researchers has managed to beat the odds with a simple formula. Mathematicians had already developed bookie-beating models that attempt to predict sporting outcomes, but they are hard to devise and don’t perform consistently. So Lisandro Kaunitz at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues tried a more direct approach: using the bookmakers’ odds against them. The team studied data on nearly half a million football matches and the associated odds offered by 32 bookmakers between January 2005 and June 2015. For every game, the trio looked for odds that might yield a better return than the average offered by bookies – say, 5 to 1 versus a mean of 2 to 1. Mean odds of 2 to 1 suggest the bookies collectively think this reflects fair odds for that outcome. But 5 to 1 offers higher returns should the outcome materialise. The team used the
Test tells how much smoking has aged sperm A SPERM age calculator can tell men how “old” their sperm is, revealing changes caused by smoking. While a woman’s age has long been known to affect the health of her offspring, we have only recently begun to understand how a father’s age can have similar effects. Older dads seem to pass on health risks via epigenetic tags on the DNA in their
MATTHEW LLOYD/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Chris Baraniuk
sperm. These tags alter how active genes are, and can themselves be altered by ageing, diet and smoking. Tim Jenkins at the University of Utah and his colleagues have studied the sperm of 350 men, looking for these genetic switches. So far, they have found changes at 147 points in the genome that seem linked to age. The team have now created a “calculator” that assesses the state of the DNA at these 147 sites. Their analysis can predict a man’s age with 95 per cent accuracy, and identify whether his sperm have aged prematurely.
beating random bets, which resulted in a loss of 3.32 per cent. So the trio decided to try it in the real world. They developed an online tool to apply their oddsaveraging formula to upcoming football matches. For five months, they placed $50 bets around 30 times a week. It worked. The team made a profit of $957.50, or an 8.5 per cent return (arxiv.org/abs/1710.02824). But the streak was cut short. Following a series of small wins,
the trio were surprised to find limits imposed on their accounts, restricting how much they could bet to as little as $1.25. A spokesperson for William Hill, one of the bookmakers the team used, said such measures are sometimes used. The gambling industry has long restricted players who appear to show an edge over the house, says Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University, UK. A classic example is card-counting – mentally noting the cards already played – which can help players win at blackjack. Casinos are quick to expel those who try it, but it is not illegal in the US or the UK. Griffiths compares the team’s approach to card-counting. “It’s not cheating at all – it’s using mathematics to try and beat a particular system,” he says. Online bookmakers sometimes briefly offer generous odds on certain matches to lure automated or expert betting systems into the open, says economist David Forrest at the University of Liverpool, UK. “Anyone who responds has their account closed.” The researchers may have fallen foul of this. In some cases they found they could not bet at all after signing up with certain bookies. This suggests their technique really was finding the best odds out there. But the house –Look at the odds, not the sport– still always wins in the end. n
Jenkins and his colleagues find that smokers have much older-looking sperm. “For a 40-year-old man who smokes, our calculator would calculate him to be 44 or so,” says Jenkins, who will present his findings at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, this month. The researchers don’t yet know if these changes are responsible for
“For a 40-year-old man who smokes, our spermbased calculator would deem him to be 44 or so”
the increased chance of autism and schizophrenia in the children of older men, but Michael Carroll at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, suspects this is the case. “The emphasis on smoking has always been on the mother’s side,” says Carroll. “But it’s becoming more evident that exposures in men can alter health.” Because sperm is produced throughout a man’s life, there’s a chance that men with old sperm might be able to reverse some of the damage, says Carroll. Jessica Hamzelou n 21 October 2017 | NewScientist | 17