[Avery Iota Kracker]

It’s nice to hear there’s a competent professor somewhere out there.

[xzins]

If she won, she won. What’s the beef?

[pyx]

The obvious question is;

What series of formulas was she using ?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The lottery is for the mathematically impaired, but when jackpots get high enough, playing the lottery is a mathematically reasonable risk/benefit proposition.

The trick is to only play when the jackpots get high.

[Durus]

"A professor at the Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Mr Rich: 'When something this unlikely happens in a casino, you arrest ‘em first and ask questions later."

A casino doesn't have arrest powers, they can only ask a person to leave. One wonders what the professor actually does for a living that he doesn't know that.

[Revolting cat!]

I’ve been telling ya that there is a method!

[American in Israel]

Mr Rich proceeds to detail the myriad ways in which Ms Ginther could have gamed the system - including the fact that she may have figured out the algorithm that determines where a winner is placed in each run of scratch-off tickets.

Mr Rich sounds like sour grapes. I highly doubt the delivered the winning tickets so many times to the same market.

[Misterioso]

According to Forbes, the residents of Bishop, Texas, seem to believe God was behind it all.

No more questions.

[Revolting cat!]

[max americana]

This happened quite some time ago back in canada where I’m from. The BC lottery corporation were suspicious how a guy kept winning the Keno and Daily 3 PLUS the BC/49. He turned out to be a statistics major and they paid him a lot of money to shut up about the “equation”.

[Blood of Tyrants]

If she had won picking numbers I would say that her degree in statistics had something to do with it. But since she won scratch off cards, it is just dumb luck. BTW, how many thousands of cards has she bought?

[Revolting cat!]

Online universities are awaiting your applications for
accelerated math and statistics Ph.D programs.
No applicants are turned down!

[NoLibZone]

Do you guys play quick pick or pick your own?

[festusbanjo]

All I ever needed to know about statistics is summed up thusly; If you flip a coin 9 times and it comes up heads each time, what are the odds of the tenth flip showing up as heads...still 50%. I have read articles about people using the lottery commission websites to look at public information about the number of scratch off tickets issued and already sold for each game, how many of the top prizes had been won, and then extrapolating the best odds of winning and purchasing tickets for the games with the best chance to still win a major prize.

[mnehring]

Having knowledge of the statistical probability of winning the lotto doesn’t improve the odds.

[anymouse]

The film ends with Lazlo arriving at Hathaway's house in a winnebago, hauling a trailer full of prizes he won in a Frito Lay, enter-as-often-as-you-want sweepstakes, where he claims to have won 31.8% of the prizes. He says that he is leaving because "it's getting a little too weird around here."

[bvw]

Only one factor of the equation of net gain.

Net Gain = Profits - Expenses

How much did she spend to win these amounts?

[Southack]

It’s moderately suspicious that 3 winning scratchoff tickets were shipped to the same small minimart.

[Roccus]

Back in the 60s ESSO had a scratch off game (IIRC, Heads or Tails) A young fellow figured out how to win at it. ESSO didn't believe him, so they ignored him. Finally, (I can't remember what changed their minds) they called him in for a meeting. They gave him a stack of the cards, he went into another room, performed his magic and returned with a fistful of winners. I don't remember how much they gave him for his system, but I do remember that part of the pay-off was a tuition-free college education.

[MarkL]

Unless she did something like counterfeiting the lottery tickets, she did nothing wrong or illegal. If she was able to statistically find some way of "beating" the lottery, more power to her. It just means that the government lottery actuaries were wrong.

Counting cards in Vegas casinos isn't illegal, and it's not even cheating. The casinos can choose who they will allow to gamble, and they only want to allow people in who can't even or even beat the odds.

Mark