Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Stanford Math PhD---Very, Very "Lucky" in Lotteries

UK's Mailonline reports:
She was called the luckiest woman in the world.

But now that luck is being called into question by some who think that winning the lottery four times is more than just a coincidental spell of good fortune.

Joan R. Ginther, 63, from Texas, won multiple million dollar payouts each time....

First, she won $5.4 million, then a decade later, she won $2 million, then two years later $3 million and finally, in the spring of 2008, she hit a $10 million jackpot.

The odds of this has been calculated at one in eighteen septillion and luck like this could only come once every quadrillion years.

Harper's reporter Nathanial Rich recently wrote an article about Ms Ginther, which questioned the validity of this 'luck' with which she attributes her multiple lottery wins to.

First, he points out, Ms Ginther is a former math professor with a PhD from Stanford University specialising in statistics....Although Ms Ginther now lives in Las Vegas, she won all four of her lotteries in Texas...

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.

He believes that after Ms Ginther figured out the algorithm, it wouldn’t be too difficult to then determine where the tickets would be shipped, as the shipping schedule is apparently fixed, and there were a few sources she could have found it out from.

According to Forbes, the residents of Bishop, Texas, seem to believe God was behind it all.
Note to Iris Mack. Now, it's your turn to jiggle the numbers and show us what you have.

5 comments:

  1. I applaud her and think that there is nothing wrong with what Ms. Ginther did. She learned the rules of the game and LEGALLY exploited them to her advantage. Show me a lawyer, banker, investor, politician or athlete that doesn't try to do the same. It's everyone else's fault for not investing the time required to develop such expertise.

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  2. She moved to Vegas?? If she can map out the state lotto I bet she's one hell of a card counter.

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  3. Sorry Bob. I've never played the lottery in my life.

    Only played the slot machines once - Las Vegas.

    But I am happy for Professor Ginther. Good for her.

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  4. These scratch off games have indeed been cracked by those willing to put in the time. Ironically, the mob has found them useful to launder money.

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

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  5. Can someone get her telephone number before Saturday's Powerball numbers are announced?

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