LF: 'Lucky' woman who won lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics PhD

Title: 'Lucky' woman who won lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics PhD
Source: Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... University-statistics-PhD.html
Published: Aug 7, 2011
Author: Rachel Quigley
Post Date: 2011-08-07 21:25:43 by Sebastian
Keywords: None
Views: 3956
Comments: 5

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.

Luck?: Ms Ginther won four lots of vast sums on lottery scratch cards, half of which were bought at the same mini mart

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.'

Money bags: First, Ms Ginther 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

Although Ms Ginther now lives in Las Vegas, she won all four of her lotteries in Texas.

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.

According to Forbes, the residents of Bishop, Texas, seem to believe God was behind it all.

The Texas Lottery Commission told Mr Rich that Ms Ginther must have been 'born under a lucky star', and that they don't suspect foul play.

The government scams dummies to buy lottery tickets. Glad someone outfoxed them.

The casinos in Nevada do the same thing. If you're REALLY good at Blackjack (a card counter), you can beat it more often than not.

And sooner or later you'll be "escorted off the premises" by Guido the friendly casino security cop. Also, every other casino in NV will have your picture and you won't be welcome there, either.