Aug 11, 2011

God or statistics?

Joan R. Ginther has won the lottery four times, each time with million dollar payouts:
Ms Ginther is a former math professor with a PhD from Stanford University specialising in statistics.
Mr Rich details 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 difficult to 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.

Full article here.
(via FlowingData)

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