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Statistician Cracks Code For Lottery Tickets

Posted by samzenpus on from the knowing-where-to-scratch dept.

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Lottery Post has an interesting story about Mohan Srivastava, an MIT educated statistician who became intrigued by a particular type of scratch-off lottery ticket called an extended-play game — sometimes referred to as a baited hook — that has a tic-tac-toe grid of visible numbers that looks like a miniature spreadsheet. Srivastava discovered a defect in the game: The visible numbers turned out to reveal essential information about the digits hidden under the latex coating. Nothing needed to be scratched off — the ticket could be cracked if you figured out the secret code. Srivastava's fundamental insight was that the apparent randomness of the scratch ticket was just a facade, a mathematical lie because the software that generates the tickets has to precisely control the number of winners while still appearing random. 'It wasn't that hard,' says Srivastava. 'I do the same kind of math all day long.'"

7 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Small typo by benedictaddis · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Lottery Post has an interesting story about Mohan Srivastava, a *millionaire* MIT educated statistician" Fixed that for you

    1. Re:Small typo by c6gunner · · Score: 4, Funny

      How do you tell the difference between an MIT mathematician and a smart MIT mathematician? One talks to the media, the other is a millionaire.

    2. Re:Small typo by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

      I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets.

      Jesus, what a choice to have to make: consulting or scratch lottery tickets.

      Better to throw oneself off a cliff.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Small typo by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Funny

      The best advice for someone who wants to "make millions" came from the Buddha.

      If you meet the millionaire on the road, kill him?

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  2. breaking news by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 5, Funny

    This just in, MIT-educated statistician Mohan Srivastava has retired suddenly at a young age and is not taking questions.

    --
    This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
  3. Re:Old story... by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Funny

    A week is not old for slashdot, I can see you are new here so we can let it slide this once. In the future you should probably also not read the articles.

  4. Why major in math? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because I am calling you from my boat, BITCH!