Soflasnapper
08-08-2011, 01:04 PM
I remain skeptical, but for what it's worth:
'Lucky' woman who won lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics PhD
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...l#ixzz1USw2UPyA (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023514/Lucky-woman-won-lottery-times-outed-Stanford-University-statistics-PhD.html#ixzz1USw2UPyA)
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">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.
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.'
[...]
Three of her wins, all in two-year intervals, were by scratch-off tickets bought at the same mini mart in the town of Bishop.
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.
</div></div>
'Lucky' woman who won lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics PhD
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...l#ixzz1USw2UPyA (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023514/Lucky-woman-won-lottery-times-outed-Stanford-University-statistics-PhD.html#ixzz1USw2UPyA)
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">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.
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.'
[...]
Three of her wins, all in two-year intervals, were by scratch-off tickets bought at the same mini mart in the town of Bishop.
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.
</div></div>