Former Math Professor Beats Lottery Odds

valis said:
Correct me if I am wrong but.....

Here in Florida there are a set number of each prize for each run of scratch off tickets. So IF the winners cashed in so far is public knowledge AND you could somehow take an educated guess at how many tickets are left in circulation you then could possibly spot instances were the odds of winning were increased.
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That's a pretty sound theory - if you don't take into the account the odds speaking against the winner. 1 to 18 septillon kills any rationalizing in this direction dead.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
I suspect they've thought of that. The cover material you scratch off seems to be metallic (maybe aluminium powder in some kind of soft plastic?) which I presume makes it practically impossible for anything to see through the cover unless it's so energetic a wavelength it has no hope of seeing the printed ink underneath.
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So maybe you can shine x-rays, or something else, from the bottom so they bounce off the cover material to a detector. Unless each card is sealed in lead until the customer opens it, there's got to be some way to read them.
 
Modified said:
So maybe you can shine x-rays, or something else, from the bottom so they bounce off the cover material to a detector. Unless each card is sealed in lead until the customer opens it, there's got to be some way to read them.
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the clerks get suspicious when you tote a portable X-ray machine into the store and aim it at the bank of tickets...
 
Rodney said:
There are three basic possibilities here. The lady math professor has:

(1) Paranormal powers;

(2) Been incredibly lucky;

(3) Detected bias in the Texas Lottery and devised a system to make money off of that bias.
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(4) Fraud.
 
epix said:
That's a pretty sound theory - if you don't take into the account the odds speaking against the winner. 1 to 18 septillon kills any rationalizing in this direction dead.
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I don't think 18 septillon scratch off tickets have been printed.
 
ponderingturtle said:
(4) Fraud.
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Okay, that is a possibility, but I believe a slim one. Once she won a big jackpot for the second time, suspicions might have been aroused and surely would have been aroused after the third win. So I find it highly unlikely that she could have gotten away with fraudulently winning a jackpot for a fourth time.
 
This sorta happened here in Ontario. A math professor was able to determine winning tickets, with a 4/5 chance of success.

I believe it was one of those scratch off tickets where you have a play board showing your winning words of numbers, then you scratched of the hidden numbers. If a hidden number matched one on your play board you scratched it off. If you uncovered so many numbers you won the corresponding prize.

As an example you have "1 4 15 23 27 29" as your winning numbers, then there is 25 hidden numbers you scratch off. If 3 of your hidden numbers match you win $10, if you get all 6 you win $25K.

The professor was able to determine what to look for in winning numbers. Tickets with say 3 and 44 were losers and those with 1 and 4 were winners.

He never revealed exactly how he did it, but he bought 5 tickets and sent them to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming commission with a letter that said "4 of 5 of these unscratched tickets are winners. You need to change your algorithm"

This sounds like what this woman was doing. Looking for specific numbers the algorithm generates on winners and buying those tickets. It might even be as easy as looking through tickets and seeing only one of them has a 44 and buying it.

As for the lottery draw win, that's strange? I'm not sure how you can determine what balls will drop with any certainty. It does seem a little fishy that she did it after winning a bunch of money on scratch tickets. As a math professor with a bunch of money I might be inclined to wait for a large jack pot then generate 100 000 tickets based on the most winning 20 numbers. That doesn't seem to be the case though.
 
Rodney said:
Okay, that is a possibility, but I believe a slim one. Once she won a big jackpot for the second time, suspicions might have been aroused and surely would have been aroused after the third win. So I find it highly unlikely that she could have gotten away with fraudulently winning a jackpot for a fourth time.
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More or less unlikely than 18 septillion to 1?

:)
 
ponderingturtle said:
I don't think 18 septillon scratch off tickets have been printed.
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Which really has no bearing on the odds being calculated. Something that has a million to one chance of happening can still happen without a million attempts- it could even happen on the first attempt.
 
3bodyproblem said:
This sorta happened here in Ontario. A math professor was able to determine winning tickets, with a 4/5 chance of success.

I believe it was one of those scratch off tickets where you have a play board showing your winning words of numbers, then you scratched of the hidden numbers. If a hidden number matched one on your play board you scratched it off. If you uncovered so many numbers you won the corresponding prize.

As an example you have "1 4 15 23 27 29" as your winning numbers, then there is 25 hidden numbers you scratch off. If 3 of your hidden numbers match you win $10, if you get all 6 you win $25K.

The professor was able to determine what to look for in winning numbers. Tickets with say 3 and 44 were losers and those with 1 and 4 were winners.

He never revealed exactly how he did it, but he bought 5 tickets and sent them to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming commission with a letter that said "4 of 5 of these unscratched tickets are winners. You need to change your algorithm".
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Do you have any more details? I note that a statistician uncovered a problem with retailers winning excessively in the Western Canada Lottery. See http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/02/06/lottery-western.html
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
More or less unlikely than 18 septillion to 1?

:)
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Much less than that, but I'm guessing that she has bought many more than just the four winning tickets. Even with tens of thousands of lottery tickets each purchased by tens of thousands of individuals over many years, however, the chances of anyone winning four jackpots by pure luck have to be slim.
 
Rodney said:
Much less than that, but I'm guessing that she has bought many more than just the four winning tickets. Even with tens of thousands of lottery tickets each purchased by tens of thousands of individuals over many years, however, the chances of anyone winning four jackpots by pure luck have to be slim.
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"million-to-one chances pop up 9 times out of 10" Terry Pratchett
 
Rodney said:
There are three basic possibilities here. The lady math professor has:

(1) Paranormal powers;

(2) Been incredibly lucky;

(3) Detected bias in the Texas Lottery and devised a system to make money off of that bias.

I'm simply throwing out some speculations -- i.e., "reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; conjecture or supposition" -- that (3) may be the most likely. If I had solid evidence, I would not be inclined to post it here.
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As to (3), there's also the anecdote how Voltaire - the 18th C. writer and philosopher - came to be independently wealthy. He noted that the total prize money of a lottery that was organized exceeded the cost of all tickets. He got together with a couple of friends and together, they bought up all tickets. Yes, it boggles the mind how a lottery organizer apparently failed 6th grade arithmetic.

100 years ago, people busted the bank at the Monte Carlo casino because they had analyzed the physical bias in the roulette wheels. Since then, the wheels are rotated among the tables on a daily basis.

Think also of the numerous stories where companies skimp on the security of chip cards.

Routinely, companies (or governments, same deal) use sub-par technology when they think they can get away with it. And sometimes, they get caught because someone who actually knows the technology outclasses them. And with math and IT technology, the wonderful thing is that it doesn't require investments to speak of, so anyone who has gained knowledge in the field can try to outclass the biggest company from his/her basement.

So really, I wouldn't be surprised if the lady in this story indeed had found out that the lottery organizer used a sloppy pseudo-random-number generator, as Beerina pointed out, or another hole in their security.

As to the probability mentioned, the article mentions that's for the case she only bought tickets for those four times. Would she really not have bought tickets at other instances? I don't think so.
 
ddt said:
As to the probability mentioned, the article mentions that's for the case she only bought tickets for those four times. Would she really not have bought tickets at other instances? I don't think so.
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Especially since the article quotes the shopkeeper saying she bought $50 of tickets at a time.
 
Rodney said:
Do you have any more details? I note that a statistician uncovered a problem with retailers winning excessively in the Western Canada Lottery. See http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/02/06/lottery-western.html
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This is all I could find: 2007 Recall on Super Bingo

Again, I'm almost certain the 5th estate interviewed the man who figured this out, and I believe he analyzed the bingo card and was able to determine cards with say B5 were winners. By way of algorithm or if was simply be process of elimination I'm not sure.

Does anyone know the specific type of scratch cards she won with? I'm curious if they are similar to the ones in this recall ie: ones that show you your winning numbers then make you scratch off the "randomly generated" numbers to match.
 
I note from the article that one of these prizes was a jackpot from a $50 scratch-off ticket. I've never heard of one of these, but wonder how different the odds are for a $50 ticket than for the usual dollar scratch-offs.
 
bruto said:
I note from the article that one of these prizes was a jackpot from a $50 scratch-off ticket. I've never heard of one of these, but wonder how different the odds are for a $50 ticket than for the usual dollar scratch-offs.
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If it's like our high priced scratch tickets 1:3ish. with the minimum $50 "free ticket" payout.

edit: I just realized you probably meant of winning the Jackpot. The odds are basically the same depending on the payout of the game. They range from about 1 in 300 0000 to 1 in 2 million, price not withstanding. A quick estimate based a $50 ticket, with a 70% payout and a $2 million Jackpot payout is about 1 in 2 million. This assumes a common distribution scheme with a second prize single payout of $1 million or half the Jackpot, then the usual $10 000, $5000, $1000 ....etc. If you take away the half Jackpot second prize that doubles you odds, so it's 1 in 1 million.

There's really no end to the set odds of winning on any scratch game. You can manipulate them as you see fit for any game. As a rule of thumb the odds of winning a $1 Jackpot are about 2x that of a larger prize, but there's no guarantee.

Oh yah, I just remembered that in Michigan they have those drawings for losing scratch tickets. I'm not sure how that effects your overall chances of winning. I guess that's based on the number of tickets sold between drawings.

Ask a simple question eh? Sorry :D
 
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