HMC, Dartmouth Entrance

On Thursday, March 30th, come to Harvey Mudd for my talk “Identifying Lottery Scams Using Mathematics and Public Lottery Data”. This is the 2017 Michael E. Moody Lecture. Like other lectures in the series, it is aimed at a general audience.

Talk abstract

This talk will tell the story of how a journalist, two mathematicians, and a statistician teamed up and used mathematics to identify people who were using the lottery as an adjunct to their illicit activities. The analysis combined old and new mathematics with on-the-ground detective work. The resulting series of journal and newspaper articles led to arrests and changes in state policy, and contributed to the resignation of the head of the Florida lottery. Still, many questions remain to be investigated.