This would be a great prop for time travel scifi movie.
Protagonist travels to 1991 and tries to convince scientist to help him. When asked for a proof, shows Gray C90 Wristwatch. "Our real computers are different, but I show you this because it does not pollute the timeline."
My premise for a time travel movie is very simple.
1. Buy a book on probability. Work through the practice exercises.
2. Time travel back to a time before the laws of probability were invented or taken seriously. Pre-1600's would be a good guess.
3. Become a gambler.
4. With the riches that will soon be pouring into your pockets, acquire resources and transform history.
The issue with getting rich gambling is not knowing the probability, it's getting other people to continue paying you when you win large amounts and/or consistently.
Even in today's professional gambling establishments (financial markets) big winners are often cut off in the name of stability.
If you know the exact results (like Biff in Back to the Future), winning things like lotteries or horse race results multiple times will draw attention.
Actually, any kind of money hoarding - moreso than anyone else - will draw the attention. Which might be OK, of course, but if you make waves that are too big, you'll affect global policy and the course of (economic) history, and all your predictions may be off.
But, getting significant but non-controlling stakes in various successful stocks might work. You'd be like Warren Buffet, who I consider to be rich, but otherwise anonymous.
In other words you end up in manure anyway.
I actually loved the side-plot in "About Time" where the main character went back in time and changed something and then they had a different child and then had to undo their change.
Create life and casualty insurance!
Gambling is not the way to get rich.
To get really rich you need to aquire people, their time and productivity. Instead of probability you need means to get people's minds so with them you can conquer territories and establish kingdom to be really rich.
It's always the accent that gives away time travellers.
Only real possibilities to avoid exile/asylum/imprisonment/execution for most of history would seem to hinge on predicting celestial events and making gunpowder, as Twain observed.
3. Become a bookmaker/start a casino.
It's like being a gambler, but you get to stack the odds in your favour, deliberately, tell people you've done so, and have everyone be fine with that. If you use any knowledge of future events to stack a few odds a little more in your favor, no-one's going to know any different, and they'll attribute any weird variances in your income to the punters who all made poor bets, rather than to your mad odds-setting skills.
If you're going to gamble, always be the house. Only a complete moron can lose money that way.
I used to have a system to play the instant lottery multiple times a day and make every single ticket a winner... I owned a liquor store that sold tickets. We made enough on lottery sales to cover our payroll completely.
Set where? Gambling was criminalized in the UK in 1541 and Europe's first legal gambling house didn't open until 1638.
Maybe they learn roulette strategy and show up right after Pascal invented the roulette wheel while he was trying to produce a perpetual motion machine (which could play a role in the time machine's tech itself too, which could resemble a "grande roue," visually akin to a g-force centrifuge or particle accelerator).
Travel to May 22, 2010.
Buy two large pizzas, cheese and 'supreme'.
Be earlier than that guy.
Credits.
5. Eventually get bludgeoned to death in a moist alleyway.
This is refreshing. A premise for a time travel movie that is both accurate in terms of its portrait of computers, and it doesn't present basic time travel "oopsies" .
I'm definitely packing this with me if I ever time travel.