"I found it hard to believe that only this tic-tac-toe game was flawed. What were the odds that I just happened to stumble upon the only breakable game the very first time I played the lottery? Of course, I knew it was possible that every other scratch game was totally secure. I just didn’t think it was very likely."
Spoken like a true statistician.
This would be evil, of course, but if you're running a lottery your entire business is stealing money from poor people.
the hunch is that it will pay out, but not how much. what if this woman in texas had 5 marked "winners" from a dirty merchant "placed" on her when she bought it to avoid a misplaced accusation?
The lottery commission in BC is on it's Nth major criminal investigation - but the trick here seems to be the simpler method of the shop stealing winning tickets from customers.
may be because he is in Canada. Do they have DMCA alike?
;)
"The package was sent at 10 am. Two hours later, he received a call from Zufelt. Srivastava had correctly predicted 19 out of the 20 tickets. The next day, the tic-tac-toe game was pulled from stores."
I know that we're supposed to be fascinated by the statistical work done cracking the code, but my real sympathy is for the head of security that received that package. How do you react in such a situation?
As an aside, the statistician seems really cool too - it's a very forthright interview and the article's much better than I expected. Both the statistician and the author seem to be very surprised by the lack of concern shown for the apparent evidence of security breaches. This, of course, has a direct analogue with the way large multi-nationals treat computer security. I was only surprised to get to the end of the article and not find that the statistician had been threatened with prosecution or similar.