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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the corrupt-random-number-algorithm dept.

Aleksandar Vulovic, czar of the Serbian state lottery, has resigned from his position after winning numbers were mysteriously broadcast on television before they had been drawn.

Allegations of fraud abound on every hand following the incident, reports the Associated Press.

In what was presented to the public as a live broadcast on Tuesday evening, one of the numbers in the winning combination was revealed before the number appeared to be drawn.

"That sparked accusations that the numbers had been chosen in advance," according to AP.

Vulovic has denied there was any dodginess and explained that the incident was due to a "technical mistake".

He added that he was stepping down from his position, not out of guilt, but out of "moral obligation".


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  • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:26AM

    by wantkitteh (3362) on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:26AM (#219025) Homepage Journal

    What are you, some sort of maths troll?

    Firstly, the poster you originally replied to made no suggestion that the probability of this happening was greater than one, merely that they saw "no reason why that should be considered vanishingly small." Your own maths bear that out, you set the probability using your example figures at 0.999999998.

    Secondly, the poster described this as the "chance" this would happen, not the probability.

    Thirdly, you've mis-constructed your probability formula from the original poster's words. There are two sentences there - see if you can tell which one is the "probability formula" you're speaking of and which is the extension where it's turned into the expected outcomes you seem to know the difference between so well, yet completely failed to differentiate between earlier.

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