Math and gambling: the test-score prodigy, the three-card-monte, Hal's tutor

texture · UNDATED (standing); tutoring dated 3 Nov / 12 Nov YDAU

• When: UNDATED (standing); the SAT-math tutoring is 3 Nov (scene 041) and 12 Nov (n321); the Big-Buddy gambling op is undated
• What: Pemulis is a math prodigy who "'ll get a full ride anywhere he wants, just on test-scores" (scene 036) — and monetizes it: he runs his own Big-Buddy group as a rigged three-card-monte / doubling-down gambling school, the little kids soon "talking like veteran Jersey-shore croupiers." He is E.T.A.'s standing instigator of wagered contests (e.g. "a fiercely-wagered-on bench-press challenge… that M. Pemulis had organized last spring," scene 037), and a repeat target of prorector discipline (deLint ties "Pemulis and Shaw's shoes to the lines," scene 026). He is Hal's SAT-math tutor (the reciprocal of Hal's tutoring him in verbal), though "SATs are six weeks away and Pemulis is less and less helpful on the math" (scene 041); his 12 Nov calculus tutorial (n321) doubles as the frame for the DMZ lobbying (event 19). His locker-room creed to a despairing kid: "you can trust math… Whose truth is deductive truth. Independent of sense or emotionality" (n324). His facility has a shadow side: he is named among E.T.A.'s "congenital plagiarists" who "put so much more work into camouflaging their plagiarism" (n304).