How to win the lottery. Part 1: The Odds

I like to keep my posts, like my love-making, short and/or sweet, so when this one started ballooning out to Oracian, or possibly John Holmesian proportions, I decided to break it up into a trilogy of geeky maths delights, guaranteed to show you how to win the lottery.

Tatts Group

I have bought precisely one lottery ticket in my life. I was fifteen and it was technically illegal. Luckily, I won jack shit.

I gave up, because you'd have to be stupid to buy a lottery ticket. Or so I keep telling myself.

Do you buy lottery tickets? If so, the following conversation may sound familiar to you, especially if your name is Bob.

"Hiya Bob, what brings you to the local newsagent where I buy my pornography."

"Hey Cedric, I'm just picking up my weekly quickpick."

"Tattslotto, eh? Did you know that the odds of winning Tattslotto are more than eight million to one against? Eight million!"

"I think I heard something like that. Still, you've got to be in it to win it."

"Uh uh. Sure, someone will probably win, but, statistically speaking, it is virtually impossible for you to win. You don't buy Powerball too, by any chance? "

"Er, sometimes, if there's a jackpot."

"Fifty five million to one*. Fifty five! Million! Man, you are such a Sucker. You won't catch me throwing my money away on this delusion. Those odds are seriously crazy. Did you know that the chance of getting hit by lightning is only one in 1.6 million? Know anyone who has been hit by lightning? Ha ha! Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe that the latest issue of Brazilians get brazilians is out." 

"Right then. See you later, Prick**." 

Cedric seems like a nice enough guy, and I like calculating big numbers and have as much interest in the goings-on behind the curtains at beauty salons as the next man, but the thing is, those odds are not true - or at least not honest. How could they be? It is a ruse invented by the anti-fun brigade. I mean, c'mon? Multiple people win these lotteries nearly every week.

Bolt Cola - now with 10% less carbon pollution!

Melbourne columnist, broadcaster and prominent climate change denialist* Andrew Bolt likes Coke. He also has a television show called The Bolt Report. On this television show he has a segment called "Spin of the Week". On this week's show his spin of the week was "carbon pollution". Here is the transcript.

And to our spin of the week. You’ve heard a thousand times that to stop global warming we’ve got to cut our emissions or, as the urgers now put it.

[this is followed by footage of various politicians repeatedly saying "carbon pollution"]

Carbon pollution? Now that phrase is meant to make you think of dirty soot, but it’s a lie. They aren’t talking about carbon, but carbon dioxide, which isn’t black stuff but invisible gas [breathes out]. And carbon dioxide isn’t pollution but plant food for photosynthesis. Now look, this is the sound of carbon dioxide [cracks a can of Coke open] and if that really was pollution would I do this? [takes a mouthful] Ahhh.

Yes, he really did say "ahhh".

It was pretty funny.

I study pollution for a living. The two big ones in my field are nitrogen pollution and phosphorus pollution. These come in various forms, often from fertilisers, and when they end up in the water they cause eutrophication and toxic algal blooms. This is bad.

They are also plant food.
They are also in Coke.

The end is still nigh, goddamit!

There has been a lot of misinformation bouncing around about the end of the world and how it was supposed to be on the 21st of May and how stupid those people who believed it were and how funny it was when it didn't happen and how even more hilarious it was to go up to the believers afterwards and say "cheer up, it's not the end of the world".

Everybody, believer or not, just needs to chill. It hasn't happened yet, but it will.

The actual date for the end of the world is the 21st of October this year, and it always has been. Harold Camping and I have been saying this for months yet nobody seems to have listened. People have simply been misinterpreting the myriad billboards posted around the world. You'll have seen them, they are the ones with a guy crapping in the corner and the seal of approval from The Bible.

Ham-fisted cancer scare

Full disclosure upfront: I like meat. It tastes good. I like steak, ham, salami and sausages. A lot. They are delicious.

They also cause cancer, dammit! Bowel cancer... cancer with shit in it.

Red meat 'increases risk of bowel cancer' - cries the Herald Sun

Warning to stay out of ham's way - puns the Sydney Morning Herald

No ham, say cancer experts - moans The Age

I had a strange sense of déjà vu (is there any other kind?) when reading these headlines. And not without reason.

The World Cancer Research Fund UK has just published a 855 page report on the best available evidence for preventing bowel cancer. This is an update to a 2007 report.

The new report, or should I say the press release*, makes a number of statements about whether particular nutritional and lifestyle factors either increase or decrease the likelihood of developing bowel cancer, or whether there is insufficient evidence. One such statement is:

For red and processed meat, findings of 10 new studies were added to the 14 studies analysed as part of the 2007 Report. The Panel confirmed that there is convincing evidence that both red and processed meat increase bowel cancer risk.

So, nothing new really, just confirming what we already knew. And, if you look more closely at the report (I didn't but these guys did), the stated risks from red and processed meats are actually slightly lower than they were in the previous report.

It's the (fuel) economy, stupid!

Have you ever bought a new car, admired the impressive fuel economy figures plastered over the front window, got the car home, driven it around for a few months and realised that it is almost impossible to reach those fuel economy figures doing anything like normal driving? Yeah, me too.

I have always assumed that the fuel economy figures were based on some kind of track - one that simulates both city and driving conditions - and that the good people from the government testing laboratories put on their grandpa hats and driving gloves and diligently drive the cars around the track for a few hundred kilometres whilst monitoring how much fuel they are using.

WRONG.

I am so smart, S-M-R-T, I mean SMEs

I wonder who first realised this was kind of a silly idea?

FUNDING AVAILABLE FOR DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENTION SUSTAINING DRINK 

SMEs are invited to submit proposals for the development of a pleasant-tasting, low-priced drink that will enable secondary school students to work safely and with sustained alertness all day.

Think of the children

I held this post off while I waited to see if I could get it published on the Screen Play blog on theage.com.au. Mission successful. Incidentally, I've been getting some excellent comments, including a couple from Barbara Biggins herself. It's been a lot of fun and makes me realise how great it would be to write a blog that people actually engage with. Oh well.


First published in theage.com.au, April 12, 2011.

Think of the children

The debate over an R18+ rating for computer games in Australia reminds me of the republican debate (and not just that the letter R is prominent in both). It is inevitable that we will become a republic, and it is just as inevitable that we will get an R18+ rating for games, yet there will always be a vocal and powerful group of "concerned citizens" hell bent on going to their graves opposing it. Given the age of most anti-R advocates (both kinds), this is a distinct possibility.

Barbara Biggins, CEO of the Australian Council of Children and the Media this week published an opinion piece on the ABC website complaining that proponents of an adult rating are cynically manipulating public opinion by claiming that the introduction of an R18+ rating would, in fact, protect children because many games that, under the present system, would get rated MA15+ would instead get rated R18+. These would then be off-limits to children (hurrah!). Her main gripe is that the supporters of an R18+ rating have co-opted the opposer's (her) main argument ("Won't somebody please think of the children?"). She is not happy.