A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
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A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
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Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#2Casinos are the new lotteries!
Companies will always put systems in place to protect systems but I'm sure there will always be loopholes!
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#3This might just be the best answer ever for that YC application question: "Tell us about a time where you hacked some system for your advantage?"
Surely they would give this Romanian guy an interview based on this answer! /S
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#4Casinos are the new lotteries! Companies will always put systems in place to protect systems but I'm sure there will always be loopholes!
Cryptocurrencies are. Why meddle with a Casino when you can swindle a bunch of guys into buying your coin and then pull the rug on your investors?
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#5I wrote this comment the other day, about something similar:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36766556#36768937
Like with trading systems, the thing that made it work here was not being smart about the maths. In fact anyone with high school maths would be able to work out when it was worth doing.
The thing here was the audacity to try to put together a business around getting it done. Things like getting investors, figuring out how to print the tickets, and delivering them.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#6This shows a date of July 21, 2023 yet https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927183 from Sept 6, 2018 with 286 points to the same URL.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#7[deleted]
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#8This shows a date of July 21, 2023 yet https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927183 from Sept 6, 2018 with 286 points to the same URL.
The top of the article says it's a 2018 republish
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#9This might just be the best answer ever for that YC application question: "Tell us about a time where you hacked some system for your advantage?" Surely they would give this Romanian guy an interview based on this answer! /S
It took me a while to figure this out but I think YC are particularly looking for answers to that question that result in a win-win, ie where you hacked a system to your advantage, and to everybody else’s advantage.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#10> Even if Mandel were to win, there was the possibility of multiple winners — a scenario that could significantly dilute the jackpot.
In fact Mandel was not able to calculate the odds of multiple winners. With publicity about an outsized jackpot, the general public is also expected to buy tickets in larger numbers, making it hard to estimate the expected winnings.
For that reason, I would not consider this to be gaming, or cheating the lottery. There was no guaranteed profit, and a moderate chance of large losses. So he took a big gamble, and was lucky to be the only winner in the end.
An interesting question is whether lotteries should publish the number of tickets sold when it implies expected winnings for every single ticket sold (as was the case in Mandel's lottery). On the one hand that should sell more tickets, but on the other hand it will deter some people from buying once the numbers stop being published...