Deborah A. Baro: Lottery winning doesn’t add up
In the Oct. 2 news article “Against the Odds: Repeated lottery winners defy odds, raise questions,” Virginia Tech statistician George Rooney claimed the odds of Ralph Havis’ winning as often as he has were 1 in a trillion, trillion, trillion. Egad!
During World War II, the odds of breaking Germany’s Enigma Code were computed at 1 in a million, million, million and considered unbeatable, and would have been too, without Alan Turing’s ingenious invention, the computer.
Havis’ luck is a statistical impossibility.
Congratulations to The Charlotte Observer for its investigative work into the darker side of this state’s lottery.
Deborah A. Baro
Wilson
This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 9:38 AM with the headline "Deborah A. Baro: Lottery winning doesn’t add up."