statistician cracks Ontario lottery scratch tickets

billyjoerob · Feb 2, 2011

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1

This might give some idea of how that mathematician in Texas managed to win the lottery three times for $10 million.

nutmeg · Feb 2, 2011

Fascinating.

tmarket · Feb 2, 2011

Quote from billyjoerob:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1

This might give some idea of how that mathematician in Texas managed to win the lottery three times for $10 million.

The fallacy is that you can examine a bulk number of tickets and then return the unused, keeping the winners, why should any lottery let you do that?

"He asked several Toronto retailers if they would object to him buying tickets and then exchanging the unused, unscratched tickets. âEverybody said that would be totally fine. Nobody was even a tiny bit suspicious,â he says. âWhy not? Because they all assumed the games are unbreakable."

ChkitOut · Feb 2, 2011

pretty interesting but not that fascinating being that he does this stuff for a living. he would know or have some idea how the logic is applied to the manufacturing process.

killthesunshine · Feb 2, 2011

there is nothing you can't do with math

the future is yours! :eek:

nutmeg · Feb 2, 2011

Quote from killthesunshine:

there is nothing you can't do with math

:eek:

Statistics are sausage. mnnnnn looks good, taste good but oiy you should see how they"re put together.

alientrader · Feb 2, 2011

He is an indian mathematician from MIT. how many of you are as smart as Indians?

billyjoerob · Feb 2, 2011

There are roughly a billion Indians, we see the only the brightest here in the US. It would be like an Indian going to LA and saying "all the American womens is beautiful!"

killthesunshine · Feb 2, 2011

Mathematicians won the war. Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes... and built the A-bomb. Mathematicians.

Perhaps we should elect a mathematician as next president of the US of A.

He could do game theory on every problem international and national.

tmarket · Feb 2, 2011

Quote from killthesunshine:

there is nothing you can't do with math

the future is yours! :eek:

The corollary is:
this has nothing to do with math

the future is not in this! :eek:

The security breach is in the way the lottery retailers allow a few to surreptitiously examine a large number of tickets for the 'tell'. The 'tell' could be any flaws in the encryption system. If the lottery took steps to prevent such examination, the loss to the system would have been minimal.

Quote from billyjoerob:

.. saying "all the American womens is beautiful!"

Aren't they all?