Talk:Chance News (September-October 2005)

A remarkable story about the German Lotto

A Miracle in the German Lotto

Strange But True, Richmond.com

April 26, 2005

Bill Sones and Rich Sones

I am uncomfortable with this article as it stands.

In the first place, the article consists entirely of the article on Richmond.com (see cite above), word-for-word. The material on Richmond.com is copyrighted, so posting it in this form would appear to violate their copyright.

So at the very least, the material should be paraphrased.

In my opinion, a careful paraphrase would improve the educational quality of the article. The way the original article is written, there is no motivation for doing the calculation as the ratio of the product of integers from 13,983,816 down to (13,983,816 - 3,015) by 13,983,816^3016. It may be obvious to us, but it won't be obvious to the student to whom this is (presumably) directed. Better to explicitly note that this is the product of the probabilities of matching any already existing combination:

(13,983,816/13,983,816)x(13,983,815/13,983,816)x....

Also, the origin of the number 13,983,816 is nowhere motivated.

I believe a complete rewrite of the article, perhaps starting the explanation with the "Birthday Problem" as an example, is not only appropriate but (because of copyright issues) demanded. Bill Jefferys 19:25, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Thanks to Tijms for obtaining permission to reproduce this article.

I've addressed my other issue by adding a discussion question. Bill Jefferys 08:23, 21 Sep 2005 (EDT)