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Fortune cookies generate extra lottery winners
Edited for brevity.The cookie crumbled right for 110 people who chose Chinese food. Betting on the numbers recommended in fortune cookies, they won from $100,000 to half a million dollars each in a multi-state US Powerball lottery, organization director Charles Strutt said on Wednesday. By the laws of statistical probability, there should have been only four or five winners among the 10.4 million ticket buyers in the lottery. But there were nearly 20 times that many, meaning $19 million had to be paid to unexpected winners in the March 30 drawing. "Something was wrong; it was out of the realm of possibility," Strutt told Reuters. "So we suspected a great system error or a fraud. In the lottery business, you have to be naturally suspicious: whenever we see a statistical aberration we check it out." Full story at link... including details on new and improved, computer-generated fortune cookie numbers! Posted by: Dar 2005-05-12 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=119002 |