
Misunderstanting the Million Dollar Curve - StreamBright
https://www.lottosonline.com/lottery-news/story/Maths_boffins_invent_lottery_prediction_system_name_it_The_Million_Dollar_Curve
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jpfr
The lottosonline article is so beside the point. The original paper uses
lottery outcomes from all over the world as the seed for "truly random"
numbers. For example to define cryptographic curves where no government agency
can introduce their magic constants.

On a meta-level, casino and lottery operators have an incentive to push
content of that sort. More than once have I been reminded in a casino that the
inventor of the Roulette game was a mathematician. "So maybe there is some
structure in the results after all".

It's as if they were planting a thought from which the number-crazies and
gampling-addicted emerge. There are always some poor souls who think they can
crack the code.

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venomsnake
Well I could probably create pretty good predictive algorithm (beating the
house edge) for (this) roulette and this croupier given enough cameras and
math/physics geniuses. After all the game obeys newton mechanics. And muscle
memory generates quite repeatable results of ball and wheel spin momentum.

Also I would not be surprised if some really good croupiers with long years of
practice are able to spin the wheel in ways that would give statistically
significant deviations from randomness.

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Houshalter
It's a pretty technical subject. I don't expect a layman to understand the
need for random constants in cryptographic algorithms. That someone
misunderstood it is not surprising.

But this is such an insane misunderstanding. To believe that lottery numbers
are somehow predictable with mathematics, wow. And this is from a website
about lotteries, which you would expect to be more familiar with these things.
Or well, maybe not. I guess in retrospect, it makes sense that people
interested in lotteries wouldn't understand randomness.

I think understanding probabilities is really important. It's something that
should be emphasized in school a bit more. People have such weird and bizarre
misunderstandings of it, like this case. The fact that lotteries are even a
thing is concerning. Let alone a thing big enough to attract millions of
dollars in ticket sales.

Personally I don't believe that they should be legal, simply because they prey
on that misunderstanding, and often on the poorest. And they give false hope.
But that's a moral/political question instead of an objective one. And voters
support them a lot, and they are difficult to get rid of.

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iamben
A slightly better (easy to understand) explanation:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/24/randomness_is_a_lott...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/24/randomness_is_a_lottery_so_why_not_use_a_lottery_for_randomness/)

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StreamBright
First time seeing this I thought they are kidding the MDC team, but it turns
out they are serious.

[https://twitter.com/ThomasBaigneres/status/70460551486131814...](https://twitter.com/ThomasBaigneres/status/704605514861318145)

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brudgers
Direct to the research paper: [http://cryptoexperts.github.io/million-dollar-
curve/specific...](http://cryptoexperts.github.io/million-dollar-
curve/specifications/2016-02-01_trap-me-if-you-can.pdf)

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cwmma
I get a cert error trying to go to this site

