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He wanted to get rid of her, she was stranded in Pakistan for three years because of this.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/uk-border-fired/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/uk-border-fired/
Feb. 3rd, 2011
He recognized a flaw with a tic-tac-toe scratcher and was accurate 90% of the time as he identified a flaw in the way tickets are printed. It revolves around singletons: the ticket has eight concealed TTT boards and 72 visible numbers, ranging from 1 to 39. If a row, column, or diagonal of numbers involve single appearances of specific numbers, the ticket was usually a winner.
After proving his analysis through buying tickets, he called the lottery commission to talk to the people involved in fraud and security, and they didn't call him back, thinking he was an idiot who spotted patterns, when he was actually a PhD who spotted patterns. So he bought a bunch of tickets, analyzed them, and via courier sent twenty to the security people with a letter telling them to call him. 19 of the 20 were winners.
That got their attention, they called within 2 hours of the delivery, and the game was withdrawn from the stores.
But statistical analysis of winning scratcher tickets shows that the distribution of winners on expensive tickets is still higher than what you'd think is reasonable, so it's probable that other scratcher games have similar flaws.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1
After proving his analysis through buying tickets, he called the lottery commission to talk to the people involved in fraud and security, and they didn't call him back, thinking he was an idiot who spotted patterns, when he was actually a PhD who spotted patterns. So he bought a bunch of tickets, analyzed them, and via courier sent twenty to the security people with a letter telling them to call him. 19 of the 20 were winners.
That got their attention, they called within 2 hours of the delivery, and the game was withdrawn from the stores.
But statistical analysis of winning scratcher tickets shows that the distribution of winners on expensive tickets is still higher than what you'd think is reasonable, so it's probable that other scratcher games have similar flaws.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1