WEBVTT - How Do People Game the Lottery? 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.920 Guess what will what's that mango? So in twenty twelve, 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.720 this little farming village in Spain called Sedetto was struggling 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.639 and there had been this downturn in the economy. There 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.600 was also this massive drought and the town's homeowner association 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.720 was running short on cash. But for some reason, they 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:19.000 decided to spend what was left of their dues on 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:21.599 the Christmas Lottery. I guess this is kind of a 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:24.000 Spanish tradition and the whole country gets into it, but 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:25.920 they bought tickets for the whole town. 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:28.960 Wow. Yeah, I've actually heard about the Christmas Lottery. I 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:31.360 think we wrote about it a while back, and of 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:33.680 course it being such a big deal in Spain. I 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.720 actually saw this one study where people were so optimistic 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:39.080 around the time and the Christmas Lottery, Like, even though 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:42.040 they know they're most likely not going to win, but 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.360 that optimism actually changes their opinions of politicians, and so 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.040 whoever's running for reelection at the time, even if they're 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.599 overwhelmingly disliked, they end up getting this big bounce because 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:52.919 of this. 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.279 Oh that's crazy. But going back to this town, they 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.520 were actually really lucky. They played. The village won nine 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.400 hundred fifty million dollars and it got split up among 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:04.640 the town's seventy families. Yeah. So, like there were these 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.280 unemployed construction workers, down on their luck farmers, and they 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.880 all walked away like millionaires or at the very least 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:16.240 one hundred thousand hoars. But everyone except one guy, that is. 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:18.880 And he was this Greek gentleman who was down on 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.199 his luck. He'd moved to the town for a woman 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.440 and they'd just broken up, and I guess he just 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:28.000 wasn't interested in playing and losing money, so he didn't 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:28.800 get to cash in. 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:31.840 Oh man, what a bummer. So he's the only one 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:32.959 who didn't participate. 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.440 Yeah, I mean, things ended up kind of all right 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.760 for him. Like he'd been trying to sell his barn there, 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.000 and before the lottery, no one had money to buy it. 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.800 But once they did, suddenly everyone was clamoring to purchase 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:47.560 his barn, so he ended up with a real estate deal. 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:49.920 But today's show is all about the lottery. How do 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:51.760 statisticians outfox the system? 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:53.320 And why should you care. 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:55.560 If you find Herbert Hoover on your lotto ticket? So 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:56.240 let's dive in. 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.880 Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius. I'm 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:21.960 Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.239 friend Mangesh how Ticketer and on the other side of 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.400 the soundproof glass, hunched over the fattest stack of Georgia 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:29.840 a lotto scratchers I think I've ever seen. I feel 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:32.040 like he might have bought all of them, Mango. But 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:34.840 that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. You know the 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.080 other thing, I've noticed, this guy loves scratching these things, Mango. 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:39.280 Have you been watching him over here? 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.320 Yeah, he actually is using this special scratch off tool. 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:44.560 It's shaped like a little ice craper, but it goes 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:46.800 on your key ring. I think he got it off, Etsy, 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.239 but I think he has it just in case of 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:50.600 a lot of emergencies. 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:53.280 Well, you never know what's going to happen, and I 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.079 do wish you luck, Tristan. But the truth is, winning 0:02:56.080 --> 0:03:00.280 the lottery is a universally accepted long shot. It's up 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:02.920 there with being struck by lightning or crushed by a meteor, 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:05.400 except in the case of winning the lotto, your odds 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:09.000 are actually much much worse, you know. Yet despite that, 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:13.240 despite knowing, the odds are ridiculously long millions of people 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:15.840 around the world will still pony up for lotteries every 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.280 single year. So with that in mind, we thought it'd 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:21.720 be interesting to explore the psychology behind why people play 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.839 the lottery, including how playing changes lives. Plus along the way, 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:28.440 we'll check out the stories of a few enterprising gamblers 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:30.960 who found pretty clever ways to game the system and 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.800 beat those odds. But before we get to that, I 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:35.920 know you did some digging this week into the history 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:38.360 of lottery, so can you fill us in just a 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:40.320 little bit on that before we get to anything else. 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.200 Yeah, So, what's crazy is that lotteries are basically as 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.040 old as arithmetic, and you can actually find stories of 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.040 lotteries in the Bible. In fact, the first lotteries weren't 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.880 really about winning prize money like in the Old Testament. 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:56.000 There are all these references to land lotteries, and Moses 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:57.960 actually used one to divvy up portions of the promised 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:01.840 land along the Jordan River. Er think this worked similar 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:04.400 to how we play powerball, Like the tribes of Israel 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.040 would have each taken a differently shaped or marked stone 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:09.440 and dropped it into a clay pot or maybe wrapped 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:11.280 it up in a piece of cloth and then they 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.560 would have shaken up all the stones and drawn one 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.480 for each piece of land on the docket. But ancient 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.320 lotteries also had these other uses, Like in the sixth 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:24.159 century BC, Athenians chose most of their government officials through sortition, 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:27.080 which is actually a term for when political representatives are 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:29.960 selected at random by people casting or drawing lots. 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.240 Which seems like a weird fit for that to have 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:36.320 been in Athens. I mean, like it wasn't Athens like 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:37.800 the birthplace of democracy. 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:41.119 Yeah, And that's actually the thing, Like the Athenians actually 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.120 viewed the lottery as more democratic than elections, and they're 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.360 thinking was that, you know, politicians or wealthy citizens could 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.839 easily rig the outcomes of elections, and to them, sortians 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.680 just seemed like the safer option. So while Athens did 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:56.920 hold elections for a few positions, the bulk of the 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.760 appointments were simply left to chance. And the way it 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:01.919 worked was that any free men over the age of 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:04.640 eighteen was entered into a lottery, and if their name 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:06.600 was drawn, they would either be assigned a term as 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.000 a juror or as a member of the citizen council. 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.880 I'm curious, So, like, how exactly did they run this lottery? 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:14.800 It sounds like they were trying to sort through and 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.159 pick from a lot of people, right. 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:19.919 Yeah, And it wasn't done powerball style. They actually had 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:24.119 a special device called a claritarian. It's to help ensure 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.039 that the draws were as random as possible. And it 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.960 was basically this massive stone slab and it had these 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.560 tiny slots in it for putting tokens in, and each 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.240 token identified a different person in the lottery. And then 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.159 they had this long tube connected to the side of 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.840 the slab, and when officials poured a bunch of black 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:45.160 and white pebbles into the tube, I mean, this is ingenious. 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.200 The pebbles would just scatter across the slab and land 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:51.839 on different tokens, and that indicated who would receive physicians 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.000 and who would be dismissed. And I don't know, it 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:55.720 kind of feels like something out of the Flintstones. 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:59.040 Price is right, that's pretty great, you know. Actually, lotteries 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:01.360 are so much more on when they include these weird 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.720 gadgets or honestly, these like overly complicated systems for choosing 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.720 their winners and just in doing your other digging. Did 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.760 you find any other early examples of weirdness like this? 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:14.800 Yeah? I mean, I think you would have liked the 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:16.919 lottery style game that they played in China during the 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:20.080 Han dynasty. It was typically played on I guess a 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:22.960 white ticket and players would select like a series of 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:25.960 numbers of characters, and if their picks were chosen in 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:29.040 the random drawing, then they'd be senter prize. But this 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:31.479 is where it gets special, right, because how do you 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.239 communicate the winning numbers when all your players are spread 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:36.120 out across a bunch of rural villages? 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:39.720 All right, well, we're talking ancient China, So I'm going 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.239 to go with I don't know, like a fireworks display 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:42.679 or something. 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.000 I mean, that would be so fun, right to watch 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.360 these fireworks sort of reveal the answers. But fireworks were 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.120 still a few centuries away at this point, so instead, 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.960 these Chinese governments used birds to deliver the results to villages, 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:58.400 Like they had a whole fleet of carrier pigeons that 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:01.360 would carry the results from village to village, and then 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.240 they'd also collect the winning tickets along the way. And 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:06.360 in fact, this is actually where the game got its 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.000 original name, bige Po I know I'm pronouncing that wrong, 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.720 but roughly translated, it's called a white pigeon ticket. 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.400 I mean, that's pretty cool. So do people still play 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:18.080 this white pigeon ticket game today? 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.840 They do, except now the game has been rebranded as Keino. 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:24.200 They've I guess stripped the pigeons out of the game, 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.240 which feels like a major loss to me. 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:27.840 That's a huge mistake. 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:32.400 Yeah, but Quino is still a huge money maker for casinos. 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:35.040 Even two thousand years ago, the game was this big 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.360 financial windfall for China. It was supposedly invented by a 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.360 warlord who's named Chung Lun. He'd been looking for a 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.640 way to get citizens to help fund his army, and 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:47.400 selling those white pigeon tickets proved a great way to 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:49.720 do just that. Pretty soon the game was being used 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.040 to fund not just the military, but all sorts of 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.760 other public works projects, and in fact, one version of 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:58.320 the game supposedly helped pay for the Great Wall of China. 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:01.320 You know, that was one of the surprising things as 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:03.880 we were doing our research for this week, was realizing 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.720 how many of these huge projects were funded by lotteries. 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.960 I was actually reading just recently about colonial America and 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:14.640 that it was largely built using revenue from lotteries. Like 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:18.120 apparently lotteries had made their way to America shores. I 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.080 think it was back in the sixteenth century. And this 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:22.720 was really around the same time that they were catching 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.160 on in Europe. So I guess in places like Italy 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:28.400 and France and England, they'd all borrowed a page from 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:31.800 China's playbook because they realized that lotteries were a smart 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:35.160 way to raise money for these various civic projects. And 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:37.400 so it's kind of crazy how early it was being 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:41.559 used in America too. You look back around sixteen twelve, 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:44.360 you had the Virginia Company of London that actually held 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:48.040 a lottery to support the struggling Jamestown colony and really 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.320 used it to save the settlers there from starvation. But 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.520 it was used in these other pitole moments too, like 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:56.880 you know, seventeen seventy six you had the Constitutional Congress 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:00.000 holding a lottery to finance soldiers for the Revolutionary Wars 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.000 or and then even after the war was won, the 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:05.640 New States relied on these lotteries for much more of 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.080 their revenue. And you know, after all, unfair taxation had 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.280 been a big part of the war. So you can 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:13.680 see why this alternative way to raise money was so 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.920 appealing to politicians. It was, you know, just so much 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:18.520 easier than creating a new tax. 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.480 I mean, it's funny because people often refer to the 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.600 lottery as, I don't know, like a voluntary tax. 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:26.560 Yeah, and you know, that's actually how one of the 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.800 founding fathers felt about lotteries too. And I'm talking about 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.560 Thomas Jefferson here, and he wrote a good bit about it. 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:34.920 So once he wrote about it, he said, far from 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.200 being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence of man. 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:42.200 Their attacks laid on the willing only. Of course, Jefferson 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:44.360 was more than a little bit biased in this situation. 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:46.240 I mean that quote comes from a letter that he 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.120 was writing to the Virginia legislature. And he was writing 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.559 this because he was looking for permission to hold his 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:54.680 own lottery. And I was actually looking into why he 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.200 was doing this, and the whole reason he wanted to 0:09:57.240 --> 0:09:59.040 do it was to pay off some of his debts. 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:00.160 It's pretty pretty fun. 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:01.240 That's pretty amazing. 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:03.360 Yeah, But you know what's weird is that there's this 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:08.200 whole idea that lotteries are really kind of this voluntary tax, right, Like, 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.080 it's only a tax if you're willing to buy in. 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:14.760 But there's actually pretty strong evidence that suggests that longtime 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.839 lotto players are induced to play a game that maybe 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:19.079 they otherwise wouldn't. 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:21.199 So explain that a little like, what do you mean 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:21.520 by that? 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:23.440 All right, Well, it might be helpful just to give 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.240 a little bit of background on who's playing the lottery. 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:28.840 So I was looking at this information from Gallup, and 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:31.760 it was showing that nearly half of all US adults 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.400 have played a state lottery at least once in their lives. 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.000 That's not that surprising. But then if you look a 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:40.120 little bit closer, the vast majority of those tickets are 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.600 bought by just twenty percent of the population, And as 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:45.880 you might guess, most of those players who make up 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:49.280 that twenty percent are actually among the poorest in the country. 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.040 In fact, according to a study from Duke this was 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:54.920 done back in the nineteen eighties, the poorest third of 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.320 American households by roughly half of the lottery tickets that 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:02.160 are sold. There's more recent data, and this is what's 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:05.679 even more disturbing, is that on average, households that make 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:08.960 less than twelve thousand dollars a year spend a full 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:12.320 five percent of their incomes on lotteries. Five percent of 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.360 their incomes on lotteries. It's pretty tragic to see that. 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.200 That's horrifying. So, I mean, there are so many things 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:21.640 that work against the poor. Like I was reading about 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.600 I'm pretty sure it was Chicago, but it was about 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.160 parking tickets, where if you get a ticket and you 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:31.040 don't pay in time, the price automatically skyrockets, and if 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.120 you can't pay that, they boot your car or take 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.839 away your license, which then makes it harder to get 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:38.360 to your job to pay that ticket. And that's actually 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:41.480 been driving a ton of bankruptcies in the city. I mean, 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:44.600 I guess if you're desperate and you're looking for a 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:47.800 fast fix for your financial troubles, like playing the lottery 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.040 seems like the quickest way out. At least that's how 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:53.480 I think about it. But it sounds like you're saying 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:55.720 it's more than that, Like these people are actually being 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:57.840 misled or maybe duped or something. 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.520 Yeah, and you know, this actually goes back to a 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:03.319 two thousand and eight study. You like the number of 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:06.120 studies I'm quoting today. I'm just breathed on. All these 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:09.040 studies came armed with them. But this was a group 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:11.880 of behavioral economists there at Carnegie Mellon, and so what 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.319 they were looking to is, is it really like the 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.040 reason why poor people are so much more likely to 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:19.520 play the lottery than those who are better off? And 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:21.880 what they found was that a lot of the desire 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:24.760 that drives these low income players isn't so much from 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:28.360 being poor as it is from feeling poor. So here's 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:30.959 how the studies authors broke down their findings. It says 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.680 in experiment one, participants were more likely to purchase lottery 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.200 tickets when they were primed to perceive that their own 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.920 income was low relative to the implicit standard. And then 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.400 an experiment too, participants purchased more lottery tickets when they 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:48.199 considered non lottery situations in which rich people or poor 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.880 people receive advantages, implicitly highlighting the fact that everyone has 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:55.000 an equal chance of winning the lottery. 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.480 So basically, when you make people feel poor, they play 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:03.160 the lottery more. And when they feel like it's equal like, 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:04.880 then they want to put money on it because they 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:06.880 feel like it's a fair game. I mean, it's kind 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.520 of heartbreaking when you think about how low their chances 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:11.000 of winning actually are though. 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.400 Right, Yeah, And I actually found yet another study, and 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:16.640 this comes from the late eighties. 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:18.439 Justly have studies. 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:20.439 I'm coming with, so many of them have almost as 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:24.760 many studies as Tristan has scratch off tickets. Not quite anyway, 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.080 this one's a good one too. So this was also 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:29.800 in the late eighties, and the researchers discovered that lottery 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.640 ticket sales in California, they rise along with the poverty rate, 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:37.120 but movie ticket sales actually don't. And so what that 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.840 says is that people don't just play the lottery for fun. 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.000 They're playing it out of desperation. So, you know, all 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:45.160 too often the lottery becomes a way for states to 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.120 shift the cost of government services from, you know, from 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:52.080 the wealthier citizens onto honestly like the most hopeless ones. 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:55.520 All right, Well, now that you've got us all righteously 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.360 indignant about the lottery, here's what I want to talk about. 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.920 Nerdy geniuses who out fox the system and made a 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:03.319 lot of payout big time. 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:06.160 All right, that sounds like a good idea. But before 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:21.400 we do that, let's take a quick break. You're listening 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:23.000 to part time genius. So we're talking about some of 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:26.080 the most brazen lottery scams in history. All right, mego, 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.800 So let's live vicariously for a minute through some of 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:32.400 these lotto legends. So who do you want to talk about? First? 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:35.720 Okay? So first I've got to tell you about Mohen 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:40.200 sivas the He is this MIT trained statistician who actually 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.560 found a flaw in a certain scratch off game from 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.120 the Ontario Lottery and this effectively allowed him to predict 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.080 winning cards about ninety percent. 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.120 Of the time. Oh wow, So what's his story? 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.720 So Mowen wasn't really interested in playing the lotto, much 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.440 less exploiting it. But one day, and this was back 0:14:57.480 --> 0:14:59.520 in two thousand and three, he found some old scratch 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.120 offs on his desks that have been part of this 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.000 gag gift I guess someone gave him, and on a whim, 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.400 he scratched off one and won three dollars. So he's 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:09.720 walking to cash in his ticket on his lunch break, 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:11.520 and as he's thinking about it, he started thinking about 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:14.200 how scratch offs must be made right, and it dawned 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.600 on him that the tickets are obviously mass produced, which 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:19.760 means that a computer program must be involved in laying 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:21.120 out the numbers on each ticket. 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.520 Yeah, I get that, But it's all random, isn't it. 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:26.240 Like that's probably another reason ticket makers use a computer, 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:28.840 because there's no way a human could actually design that 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:33.200 many tickets and still keep the numbering completely random, right, Sure? 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.320 But Moan realized that the computers can't be generating truly 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:38.920 random numbers either. Like if they were, though, I mean, 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.480 the lottery company had no control over the actual number 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.600 of winning tickets produced, and if that were the case, 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.240 it would mean that some ticket packets would have very 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.560 few winners or maybe even none at all. And obviously 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.000 it would be tough to get retailers and also players 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:55.040 to keep buying those tickets if so many of those 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:55.920 cards were duds. 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.840 Okay, that makes sense. So if the tickets like they 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.840 can kind of have to have the illusion of randomness 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:06.240 while actually being incredibly ordered beneath the surface, is that 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:07.600 what you're saying exactly? 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.520 And once Moan figured this out, he decided to try 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.560 and crack the algorithm that generated all those numbers, you know, 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.400 just for fun, because he was from MIT and a statistician, right, 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.480 so he sat down to study this one tic TAC 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.240 toe scratch off game he'd been playing, and after just 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:25.720 a few hours he discovered that the visible numbers on 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:29.360 the ticket actually dictated which digits were hidden under the 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.600 latex coding. So basically, every ticket had like eight tic 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:36.640 tac toe game boards on it, and each board would 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.400 contain some visible numbers. But if you look to see 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.320 how many times those numbers repeated on the card, and 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:44.680 mostly it was if a number was a singleton and 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:48.000 not repeating, you could actually tell which cards were winners, 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:50.960 and the prize money could be anywhere between three dollars 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:52.600 and fifty thousand dollars. 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.680 Okay, all right, I mean, I know it all sounds complicated, 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.360 But what I find so fascinating about this is, as 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.040 you're saying, Mohen basically found a way to determine if 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.879 a ticket was a winner without having to scratch anything off, right, 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:06.560 And you're saying he got this trick to work like 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:08.600 ninety percent of the time, the guy must have made 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:09.400 a fortune. 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.359 So that's the weirdest part. Moon really did this for 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.840 the love of math and not money. In fact, once 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:18.800 he was sure his technique worked, he actually contacted the 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:22.000 Ontario Lottery Gaming Corporation and told him about the flaw 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.040 he'd found. And it's funny because he told NPR that 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:27.800 he was playing telephone tag with lottery, and when they 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.000 finally got to talk to one another, they kind of 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:33.560 didn't believe him. So he sent them twenty unscratched cards 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:35.720 and separated them into what he thought would be winning 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:38.199 cards and duds. And when they scratched them off and 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.080 realized he predicted correctly, that's when they called him back. 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.840 Oh man, I bet he felt pretty awesome. That's pretty wild. 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:47.600 Yeah, I mean, he later discovered the problem wasn't exclusive 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:49.480 to Ontario. I mean, it kind of makes sense, right. 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.720 It turned out the same trick was also being employed 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.920 in Colorado, though when he analyzed those cards, he could 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:58.119 only figure him out with seventy percent accuracy. 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.040 And that's still pretty impressive. I mean, you know, as 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:03.120 nice as it was for Mowen to come clean about 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.000 his discovery, I feel like that's certainly not how most 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:08.800 attempts to game the lottery turnout. And I was just 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:10.880 looking at some other cases, you know, if you take 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:13.520 the case of Jerry and Marge Selby, for instance, and 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.879 this comes from this great story by Jason FAGONI and 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.120 we actually had Jason on the program earlier this year 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:21.399 to talk about his book. It was called The Woman 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:22.439 Who Smashed Codes. 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:24.800 I mean, that was honestly one of my favorite episodes. 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.560 Is so fascinating, and my mom just bought that book 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.840 because she loved Jason so much. But tell me about 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:31.800 the Selby's. 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:33.879 All right, So they're from Michigan and they were basically 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:35.639 among the first players to find a flaw in a 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:38.399 state lottery game. The game was called Windfall, and this 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:40.280 was back in two thousand and three, and it came 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.720 down to this unique quirk and wind falls rules, namely, 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.480 whenever the jackpot would rise to roughly two million dollars 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:49.720 or so without anybody winning it, the payoffs for smaller 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:53.879 prizes increased dramatically. So basically, if a player waited until 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.960 this so called roll down period, which typically lasted for 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.720 a few days every three months or so, they would 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.480 stay to win more than they lost. Then. Of course, 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:04.760 this is on average, and so if they were to 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.040 buy an especially high number of tickets during that rolldown, 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:10.919 say like you know, one hundred thousand dollars worth, then 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.159