3 ms·

Misunderstanting the Million Dollar Curve

11 points by StreamBright 11y ago

StreamBright 11y ago
First time seeing this I thought they are kidding the MDC team, but it turns out they are serious. https://twitter.com/ThomasBaigneres/status/704605514861318145 https://twitter.com/ThomasBaigneres/status/70460551486131814...
cwmma 11y ago
I get a cert error trying to go to this site
iamben 11y ago
A slightly better (easy to understand) explanation: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/24/randomness_is_a_lottery_so_why_not_use_a_lottery_for_randomness/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/24/randomness_is_a_lott...
jpfr 11y ago
The lottosonline article is so beside the point. The original paper uses lottery outcomes from all over the world as the seed for "truly random" numbers. For example to define cryptographic curves where no government agency can introduce their magic constants. On a meta-level, casino and lottery operators have an incentive to push content of that sort. More than once have I been reminded in a casino that the inventor of the Roulette game was a mathematician. "So maybe there is some structure in the results after all". It's as if they were planting a thought from which the number-crazies and gampling-addicted emerge. There are always some poor souls who think they can crack the code.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Well I could probably create pretty good predictive algorithm (beating the house edge) for (this) roulette and this croupier given enough cameras and math/physics geniuses. After all the game obeys newton mechanics. And muscle memory generates quite repeatable results of ball and wheel spin momentum. Also I would not be surprised if some really good croupiers with long years of practice are able to spin the wheel in ways that would give statistically significant deviations from randomness.
Houshalter 11y ago
It's a pretty technical subject. I don't expect a layman to understand the need for random constants in cryptographic algorithms. That someone misunderstood it is not surprising. But this is such an insane misunderstanding. To believe that lottery numbers are somehow predictable with mathematics, wow. And this is from a website about lotteries, which you would expect to be more familiar with these things. Or well, maybe not. I guess in retrospect, it makes sense that people interested in lotteries wouldn't understand randomness. I think understanding probabilities is really important. It's something that should be emphasized in school a bit more. People have such weird and bizarre misunderstandings of it, like this case. The fact that lotteries are even a thing is concerning. Let alone a thing big enough to attract millions of dollars in ticket sales. Personally I don't believe that they should be legal, simply because they prey on that misunderstanding, and often on the poorest. And they give false hope. But that's a moral/political question instead of an objective one. And voters support them a lot, and they are difficult to get rid of.
brudgers 11y ago
Direct to the research paper: http://cryptoexperts.github.io/million-dollar-curve/specifications/2016-02-01_trap-me-if-you-can.pdf http://cryptoexperts.github.io/million-dollar-curve/specific...

11 points by StreamBright 11y ago

First time seeing this I thought they are kidding the MDC team, but it turns out they are serious. https://twitter.com/ThomasBaigneres/status/704605514861318145 https://twitter.com/ThomasBaigneres/status/70460551486131814...

cwmma 11y ago

I get a cert error trying to go to this site

iamben 11y ago

A slightly better (easy to understand) explanation: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/24/randomness_is_a_lottery_so_why_not_use_a_lottery_for_randomness/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/24/randomness_is_a_lott...

jpfr 11y ago

The lottosonline article is so beside the point. The original paper uses lottery outcomes from all over the world as the seed for "truly random" numbers. For example to define cryptographic curves where no government agency can introduce their magic constants. On a meta-level, casino and lottery operators have an incentive to push content of that sort. More than once have I been reminded in a casino that the inventor of the Roulette game was a mathematician. "So maybe there is some structure in the results after all". It's as if they were planting a thought from which the number-crazies and gampling-addicted emerge. There are always some poor souls who think they can crack the code.

venomsnake 11y ago
Well I could probably create pretty good predictive algorithm (beating the house edge) for (this) roulette and this croupier given enough cameras and math/physics geniuses. After all the game obeys newton mechanics. And muscle memory generates quite repeatable results of ball and wheel spin momentum. Also I would not be surprised if some really good croupiers with long years of practice are able to spin the wheel in ways that would give statistically significant deviations from randomness.

Houshalter 11y ago

It's a pretty technical subject. I don't expect a layman to understand the need for random constants in cryptographic algorithms. That someone misunderstood it is not surprising. But this is such an insane misunderstanding. To believe that lottery numbers are somehow predictable with mathematics, wow. And this is from a website about lotteries, which you would expect to be more familiar with these things. Or well, maybe not. I guess in retrospect, it makes sense that people interested in lotteries wouldn't understand randomness. I think understanding probabilities is really important. It's something that should be emphasized in school a bit more. People have such weird and bizarre misunderstandings of it, like this case. The fact that lotteries are even a thing is concerning. Let alone a thing big enough to attract millions of dollars in ticket sales. Personally I don't believe that they should be legal, simply because they prey on that misunderstanding, and often on the poorest. And they give false hope. But that's a moral/political question instead of an objective one. And voters support them a lot, and they are difficult to get rid of.

brudgers 11y ago

Direct to the research paper: http://cryptoexperts.github.io/million-dollar-curve/specifications/2016-02-01_trap-me-if-you-can.pdf http://cryptoexperts.github.io/million-dollar-curve/specific...