Sure, we all know that logic is flawed, but this blog is FULL of examples of people misjudging the odds … Odds are that there’s an awful lot of that letter in circulation, and it’s the other one in the unique pair that really controls the prize – but a less skeptical person might easily think “Ooh, I got one of the special letters, I’m half-way to winning! I’d better buy more product …” Obviously those “singleton” letters in each word control the number of winners – and yes, on the very first day I got one of those letters. It’s obvious looking at the list of words that each word has two unique letters in it, the rest of the letters appear in several or all of the words. Recently a food product I buy regularly started a contest – the inside of the lid has a letter, and if you can collect the letters to form certain words you can win fairly substantial prizes. On a related note, I wonder if playing on general awareness of this type of hack could actually be used to increase sales.
Shane, you’re correct – the lottery has already priced in all the winning tickets and knows it’ll come out ahead, so only the other players are being defrauded.
