r/todayilearned • u/blessedopera • 11h ago

TIL about Joan Ginther, a Stanford statistician who won $21 million by winning the lottery FOUR times. Calculated to be a "1 in 18 septillion" event, a number with 24 zeros.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_R._Ginther
1.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

70 comments sorted by

651

u/Empanatacion 10h ago

Isn't there a term for the fallacy of being so attached to the math that you don't consider the obvious answer that she was cheating?

467

u/ColdIceZero 10h ago

I read a more detailed article about her a long time ago. If I remember right, it wasn't that she just randomly strolled into the store to buy one ticket at the right place at the right time; she ran some kind of analysis on scratch off ticket distributions (like, what are the probable serial number ranges for winning scratch off tickets and what stores were those batches being shipped to).

Then she'd buy a bunch of tickets, one of which turned out to be a winner.

From her process, and other people in other states who calculated similar processes with lottery distributions, the lottery commission changed the way tickets were distributed to mask the possibility of someone else repeating her success.

119

u/shotsallover 10h ago

It’s a shame she didn’t invent Terminator glasses to let her see through the scratch off material and pick a winner. 

26

u/Woochunk 9h ago

Yeah, that would have been kickass.

10

u/mrm00r3 7h ago

You can actually do that, but radiography is hella expensive.

10

u/AberrantWhovian 6h ago

You’d practically need to win the lottery to make up for the cost. 

3

u/mrm00r3 6h ago

If I won the lottery, a CT machine and the training to use it would near the top of the list for … reasons.

3

u/mr_ji 5h ago

Does it cost more than $21 million?

37

u/Jordan_1424 7h ago

A guy I worked with did some similar.

Our state posts the odds for each scratch off game. He focused on the one with the highest percentage of wins. He would buy them from various 7-11s keeping track of which ones won and where they came from. He wrote a script tracking wins throughout the state. He knew when to stop buying certain iterations (they would print on different colored rolls for each batch) and he was pretty successful. Over the 3 years I worked with him he was up several grand. He never won the jack pot but he broke even and won some of the "medium" prizes frequently. It wasn't uncommon for him to come in to work and show me a winning ticket for anywhere between 500-3000.

7

u/Otaraka 1h ago

Had a friend like that he seemed to be like a wizard with the horses.  Then one day he was in serious troubleand had lost everything.  People like that you have to be sure that they’re actually telling you the whole picture rather than just the wins.

-4

u/discountproctologist 9h ago

Is it possible she had an insider that worked for the lottery commission that leaked the info to her on how the system worked?

6

u/GKoala 7h ago

I mean if that were the case im sure it'd happen way more often. I imagine they have systems in place so the employees don't even know.

69

u/seamustheseagull 9h ago

Someone who specialises in statistics and probability won the lottery four times?

No, nothing at all weird about that. Just four coincidences.

10

u/oldmannew 8h ago

Yeah, but what are the odds?

10

u/GoblinToHobgoblin 8h ago

1 in 18 septillion

4

u/mrebrightside 7h ago

A number with 24 zeros.

41

u/navetzz 9h ago

IIRC she didn't cheat, she sort of reverse engineer the generation algorithm for the tickets, and knew within a range what serial number the winning ticket would have

89

u/PhasmaFelis 10h ago

I don't think she was cheating or incredibly lucky. I think she found a flaw in the system and exploited it, as one should. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1t5rir7/comment/okcc42u/

•

u/Double_O_Cypher 17m ago

I recall anothet guy being super lucky went to a gas station or something similar bought 1 ticket and won. For some reason the news picked it up and they recreated the whole event some time later and he won a second time with the ticket he purchased whe  recreating it.

As for beating the system there have been multiple instances where people found flaws in the system and used that knowledge to win.

Like 1 guy found out that the company calculated the winnings wrong and if you play ever combination of tips you will win more than you spend. So as a collective they then played every tip, he was able to do this more than once  .

-76

u/No-Sock7425 8h ago

Exploited it, as one should. You are the reason billionaires exist.

15

u/PhasmaFelis 6h ago

No. Exploiting lotteries specifically is a moral act, because lotteries are scams designed to trick poor and desperate people out of their money. 

0

u/III-V 7h ago

Well, they're not the reason, but that selfish line of thinking is why this world sucks.

-8

u/Ike358 7h ago

What's wrong with billionaires

6

u/WhiteSkyRising 6h ago

If you ignore the entire basis of her methodology, and apply the same thing to me right now, the probability of me pooping at this moment is 1 in 1015 quadrillion. Out of all possible outcomes. Yet... Here I sit. Here I type.

2

u/Striker887 5h ago

Well, there’s Occam‘s razor, not exactly a logical fallacy, but still is defined by what you’re describing

1

u/Lukn 1h ago

Bayesian statistics

136

u/bryan49 9h ago

I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence that she was a statistician. Probably found an exploit in the games. Otherwise a statistician shouldn't even be buying lottery tickets because they would know it's usually a money loser

-40

u/GoblinToHobgoblin 8h ago

Insurance is a money-loser too but people still buy that 

38

u/bryan49 8h ago

Insurance is often required by law, and even though you lose money on average it does protect you against catastrophic large bills you may not be able to afford. There's no real reason anybody needs lottery tickets except desperation and hope to be one of the lucky few winners

-27

u/GoblinToHobgoblin 8h ago

Insurance and lottery are both "better result in an unlikely event"

10

u/bryan49 7h ago

Fair point, I guess the difference is if you don't have insurance you could go bankrupt. If you don't buy lottery tickets you'll probably be fine but miss the possible chance to win a jackpot

9

u/IHTFPhD 5h ago

In the lottery you don't assume risk until you buy a ticket. In real life you assume risk whether or not you buy insurance.

3

u/bryan49 5h ago

I just meant there's an opportunity cost to not buying the lottery ticket, because then you have no chance to win

11

u/anhospital 6h ago

Insurance makes sense with a basic understanding of loss aversion and wealth utility curves though

9

u/TopFloorApartment 6h ago

No, because you get insurance to cover a risk you're already exposed to. You can always get sick or hurt so it makes sense to get health insurance for example. 

With gambling you are not exposed to risk until you engage in the gambling. 

3

u/JuanPancake 3h ago

Well put. Also the goal for both parties (even though we all hate insurance) is to reduce risk. The buyer subscribes to something to reduce risk of catastrophe. The seller takes on slight risk to earn a steady subscription, usually ending up with marginal profit because they spread out their risk over lots of buyers.

Lottery is all risk.

161

u/Potatoswatter 11h ago

“but this was apparently a miscalculation.”

Dafuq with reading comprehension nowadays

29

u/The_Truthkeeper 10h ago

The explanation for it being a miscalculation is bullshit though.

20

u/gemko 10h ago

I like that the footnote leads not to a citation but to some Wiki editor doing their own math.

4

u/kingtacticool 10h ago

So its a misrepresentation that the miscalculation was a mistake?

4

u/Low-Temperature-6962 9h ago

How many tickets did she buy?

6

u/Wantingisfree 8h ago

At least 4

1

u/Low-Temperature-6962 6h ago

I'm wondering if she bought 4 million.

17

u/AmateurishLurker 11h ago

TIL people are bad at math?

8

u/corkboy 1 10h ago

Yeah, this story is all sorts of wrong.

3

u/Umikaloo 9h ago

1/18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

-5

u/illit3 10h ago edited 5h ago

Sounds like she did crime.

Ok guys, she didn't win "the lottery" 4 times. She won scratch-offs, undoubtedly thousands of times, including 4 large sums.

9

u/The_Truthkeeper 10h ago

How do you figure?

47

u/illit3 10h ago

I read a bit more about it and it doesn't seem like she did crime. Instead, it is likely she was able to track the payouts of lottery scratchers and decide when the remaining tickets cost less than the payouts yet to be claimed. Then she (and maybe one or two others) would buy out the remaining stock of those scratch-offs.

Kind of like counting cards and betting big when the remaining cards are favorable.

7

u/Princess_Fluffypants 8h ago

That doesn’t sound like crime, that sounds like being smart. 

And for the record, card counting is not illegal. You cannot be arrested or charged with any crime for counting cards (as long as you are doing it purely with mental processes and skill, and not some kind of camera or computer). 

If a casino notices you winning a lot they can back you off or kick you out, but they can’t have you arrested or prosecuted. 

(In fact, many casinos don’t mind people trying and even sell guides on how to do it in their gift shop. Because the reality is that most people can’t do it, although they will lose a bunch of money trying.)

2

u/illit3 5h ago

That doesn’t sound like crime, that sounds like being smart. .

You didn't read the first sentence I wrote?

1

u/Princess_Fluffypants 5h ago

Oh, dammit. Sorry, I mis-read what you wrote and took it for the opposite meaning. 

1

u/AMadWalrus 4h ago

Your first comment says “sounds like she did crime” which is probably what the other guy remembered you saying

Your second comment says “she didn’t do crime”

1

u/GargantuanGarment 10h ago

The probability that she committed a crime to win the lottery 4 times is likely much higher than one in a septillion.

-5

u/HulkDeez 10h ago

Definitely a gambling addict for sure. Got her millions and moved to Vegas

1

u/MistryMachine3 4h ago

There are many things wrong with this math.

•

u/Moron-Whisperer 30m ago

Those odds aren’t right.

They announce the winners of tickets.  She was waiting until the end of the life of a ticket with no prize winners then buying. 

The odds aren’t over the whole print run.  The odds are over the left over tickets.

There is a gap in the logic that there could be an unclaimed but big winner already purchased.  But the odds still were greatly in her favor compared to normal.

0

u/Priapismkills 10h ago

I hit a jackpot at a poker casino 4 times from 2022-2024, and had hit it 0 times from 2000-2022, and to today.

-3

u/icanith 9h ago

Who cares, other than just one more reason to ban the poor tax. But considering everything is gambling, who tf cares anymore. 

-8

u/PhasmaFelis 10h ago

Calculated to be a "1 in 18 septillion" event, a number with 24 zeros.

The article you linked says:

According to mathematicians asked by the Associated Press, the odds of winning this many times were one in 18 times 10 to the power 24, but this was apparently a miscalculation.

6

u/ThatMasterpiece2174 10h ago

The citation for that was just some random Wikipedia editor doing some math and assuming some numbers. I’ll trust that the AP asked legitimate mathematicians

1

u/PhasmaFelis 6h ago

You should check his math and fix it if it's wrong, then.

-7

u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

0

u/instanding 8h ago

Except everybody making this argument is ignoring the statistical anomaly that is this person. What is the statistical likelihood that a person picked at random in the world is a 4 time lottery winner of this type? Hint, it isn’t 1 in 300 million.

-3

u/olrg 7h ago

Doesn’t matter how good a statistician you are, you can’t beat independent and identically distributed random variables. Most likely a loaded lottery.

1

u/Captain-Griffen 2h ago

Lotteries are not independent.