Mathematician Enlisted to Investigate Lottery Wins

Emory University mathematician Skip Garibaldi helped do the math for a Palm Beach Post investigation of suspicious wins in the Florida Lottery.

Garibaldi's previous work on lotteries, written up for the American Mathematical Monthly as "Finding Good Bets in the Lottery, and Why You Shouldn't Take Them," won him and his coauthor MAA's Lester R. Ford Award in 2011.

Recruited by Palm Beach Post reporter Lawrence Mower, Garibaldi, along with Philip Stark (University of California, Berkeley) and Richard Arratia (University of Southern California), analyzed a database of everyone who has won more than a $600 prize in the Florida Lottery in the last decade and identified those who were defying the odds.