
Broken Lotteries | Wired Science - kefeizhou
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/broken-lotteries/
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praptak
"Lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math" just got more literal.

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Udo
In these cases, yes. Of course there's also the more direct saying that
lotteries are a tax on stupid people. But I don't see it that way. It's
supposed to be a contract between a lot of poor people allowing one or more of
them a chance at a "rich" life. If anything, it's a tax on desperate people.

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praptak
Yes, (a (non-broken) lottery might be a rational choice even for someone
understanding the math behind it.

If you only have $20k and need $0.5M for an urgent life saving operation, then
the expected payoff for not playing is -$20k (death) and it's -$20k+(some non-
negative value representing the win) for spending all of your money on
tickets.

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albedoa
It doesn't even need to be that desperate. I understand the math, and I play
the lottery every once in a while for the same reason that perfectly rational
people visit casinos: it's fun and carries a non-zero chance of a payoff that
is more life-changing than the money I spend on it. Being stupid is not a
requirement.

We spend our money on plenty of things that offer negative monetary returns in
exchange for pleasure, comfort, and entertainment. Premium beer, in my case.

Besides, it's not constructive to consider only the straight monetary
expectations of lotteries when discussing their socioeconomic implications.
Poor people are generally not buying tickets because they think it's the
mathematically correct move.

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spaetzel
Looked more into Cash WinFall, looks like they are trying to fix the lottery
and are blocking gamblers from buying more than $5000 of tickets per day per
terminal: <http://www.masslottery.com/about/news.html>

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albedoa
The article from the old discussion mentioned that lottery merchants were
violating a number of rules by letting these high-rolling customers run the
ticket machines, etc. I wonder how they'll enforce this new rule if they had
trouble enforcing the rest of them.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828122>

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joezydeco
So Srivastava could determine a winning-vs-losing ticket by looking at it.
_What lottery out there_ lets you examine and play with tickets before
purchasing them? Are you allowed to return an unscratched ticket for a refund?

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JacobAldridge
The articles linked to in the OP (both of which have been discussed on HN
before) provide a lot more detail.

To answer your specific question, Srivastava called the provincial lottery
agency (iirc - it was Canadian) and asked 1) Would they send him a large
number of tickets to use for a promotion / fundraiser, and 2) Would they "buy
back" at face value any unused tickets. They said they would gladly do both -
meaning he could examine before scratching, return unscratched, and also avoid
lining up at the drug store to buy 10,000 tic-tac-toe tickets at once!

Edit: Previous discussions

Srivastava - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2166555> Cash WinFall -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828122>

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joezydeco
And it wasn't suspicious when the lottery got back a large number of unsold
tickets broken off the reel?

I give Srivastava credit for finding and exploiting the loophole, but they
also seem to be easily closable. So the scratchoff is vulnerable. Future ones
might be as well. A little common sense and better security could avoid
another mishap.

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geon
I thought the winning tickets would be decided first, _then_ filled with
winning/losing numbers and symbols, specifically to avoid situations like
this.

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sesqu
No, that's exactly what lead to these situations. If you choose the winning
tickets first, the player may have access to observed numbers of winners or
your potential filler algorithm. That information must be accounted for by the
design.

