Norwegian Lotto Mistakenly Told Thousands They Were Filthy Rich After Math Error (theregister.com) 29
Thousands of Norwegians briefly believed they had won massive Eurojackpot prizes after a manual coding error by Norsk Tipping mistakenly multiplied winnings by 100 instead of dividing. The Register reports: Eurojackpot, a pan-European lottery launched in 2012, holds two draws per week, and its jackpots start at about $12 million with a rollover cap of $141 million. Norsk Tipping, Norway's Eurojackpot administrator, admitted on Friday that a "manual error" it its conversion process from Eurocents to Norwegian kroner multiplied amounts by 100 instead of dividing them. As a result, "thousands" of players were briefly shown jackpots far higher than their actual winnings before the mistake was caught, but no incorrect payouts were made.
Norsk Tipping didn't disclose how large the false jackpots were, but math suggests the improper amounts were 10,000x times higher. Regardless, it seems like a lot of people thought they were big winners, based on what the company's now-former CEO, Tonje Sagstuen, said on Saturday. "I have received many messages from people who had managed to make plans for holidays, buying an apartment or renovating before they realized that the amount was wrong," Sagstuen said in a statement. "To them I can only say: Sorry!" The incorrect prize amounts were visible on the Norsk Tipping website only briefly on Friday, but the CEO still resigned over the weekend following the incident.
While one of the Norsk Tipping press releases regarding the incident described it as "not a technical error," it still appears someone fat-fingered a bit of data entry. The company said it will nonetheless be investigating how such a mistake could have happened "to prevent something similar from happening again."
Norsk Tipping didn't disclose how large the false jackpots were, but math suggests the improper amounts were 10,000x times higher. Regardless, it seems like a lot of people thought they were big winners, based on what the company's now-former CEO, Tonje Sagstuen, said on Saturday. "I have received many messages from people who had managed to make plans for holidays, buying an apartment or renovating before they realized that the amount was wrong," Sagstuen said in a statement. "To them I can only say: Sorry!" The incorrect prize amounts were visible on the Norsk Tipping website only briefly on Friday, but the CEO still resigned over the weekend following the incident.
While one of the Norsk Tipping press releases regarding the incident described it as "not a technical error," it still appears someone fat-fingered a bit of data entry. The company said it will nonetheless be investigating how such a mistake could have happened "to prevent something similar from happening again."
Not good at math (Score:3, Informative)
Lotteries are for people who are not very good at math and probabilities.
Apparently, the people operating the lotteries are not very good at math either.
Re: (Score:2)
Millions of people go to Vegas every year... so I think there are a lot of folks in that "not very good at math" grouping.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, there are people who are good at math that go to Vegas. But they're not the ones who KNOW in their heart that they are going to win. Those people, are NOT good at math.
Re: (Score:2)
Alternatively
There is a group of mathematicians who know they're going to win, because they understand which games can have their odds adjusted in their favor.
There is also a group of security guards who have the mathematicians faces on record, and they pass them around from casino to casino. The house always reserves the right to ask people to leave, politely, before they escort them from the premises.
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Millions of people go to Vegas every year... so I think there are a lot of folks in that "not very good at math" grouping.
Most of the people that go to Vegas know they're not going to win anything. My grandparents used to go every year, and that vacation was their annual highlight. They set aside a budget, enjoyed themselves blowing it on the tables, then enjoyed the hotels and the shows. This was the early 60's, mind you, the height of the Rat Pack era when Sinatra and Dean Martin were still playing there, and there was a mobbed-up mystique about the place to the WWII generation. My grands knew they weren't going to win anyth
Re: (Score:2)
Lotteries are a form of entertainment.
They're no more for people bad at math than any other form of entertainment.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, they area lso a significant source of funding that schools and other state projects rely on, effectively a form of tax.
I will grant you that it is more fun to buy a ticket than directly write a check to the tax authorities voluntarily. It's also less efficient to administer.
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also it disproportionately takes resources from the vulnerable, and any community group fundraising like this that is covering a gap is really making up for the lack of funding provided by the people who are benefiting from their work.
Nobody should need this kind of boon. This kind of argument in favor of gambling shouldn't be necessary.
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How about we not treat adults like children, unable to make their own decisions. How about that?
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How about we not project that every decision is made perfectly by a perfectly informed technically capable individual without turning everything into a primary school class where everyone gets a gold star but they also get to pretend they're a rugged individualist huh.
How about we, instead of making everything into a question of self worth, look at resource flows and understand how they do and do not benefit society as a whole... or is that kind of governance, the kind where they actually try to make provis
Re: Not good at math (Score:3)
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It's interesting how when someone says "this is a systemic problem, the part where groups like this need to do things that disproportionately take from the immediate community around them to meet a need that is supposed to be taken care of with peoples' tax dollars", every commentator comments on how actually gambling is a personal choice.
Interesting. And orthogonal.
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They are a form of entertainment for some people. But way too many people see it as their dream ticket to riches, even spending grocery money on lottery tickets. Think about it...where are lottery ticket counters most concentrated? In poor neighborhoods, of course. These are people who cannot afford this kind of entertainment.
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Plenty of people can't afford $1000 concert tickets for Taylor Swift too, and yet we don't clutch our pearls about it.
Freedom has consequences. People making poor choices is one of them.
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Sure, but we shouldn't have a government that is actively pushing people to make poor decisions. That's not OK.
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And yet, we have public schools.
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You should probably try looking at... literally any English speaking country that isn't America. Or any country in Europe that isn't Hungary.
But I mean... this seems like an ideological argument for you so I don't expect any evidence to make a fuck of a difference.
a substitute for class consciousness (Score:2)
Lotteries are a dream that sustains millions of souls through the deep depression that comes with being on the bottom rungs of a consumer culture.
You don't understand lottery (Score:2)
That's naive. Many if not most people know quite well how dim their chances are to win. In Europe, they're told before they can play what the probability for a class 1 win is, like 1:160,000,000 for the Eurojackpot lottery. But they also know that most lotteries spend a substantial amount of their earnings for good causes, so the money is not just lost (in Eurojackpot, I think it depends on which country someone's in, but it's things like sports, culture, humanitarian projects). And most of all, beside the
Re: You don't understand lottery (Score:2)
(Actually it's 1:140,000,000, but I guess the difference, in this case, is, despite significant, negligible ;-)
Salt in the wound (Score:2)
I still think they shouldn't have notified people by writing "we regret to inform you that you are a BIG LOSER".
Re: (Score:2)
They had to!
Any email that contains the phrase "we regret to inform you that you are not a BIG WINNER" goes straight to the spam folder.
Filthy Rich vs Just Filthy (Score:2)
If I had to put my money on it, I'd bet they were filthy about it.
Re: (Score:1)
Does being filthy rich require dirty money?
A CEO who actually (Score:2)
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For all of you worried about this very unfortunate CEO, the story has a happy ending for her; she got a USD 300k severance package [nettavisen.no] (Nowegian) so she'll be fine. Which is also probably 10k times what she ought to get, so there is some poetry in that.
"Filthy rich"? Not really (Score:1)
What the article fails to mention is that the number was "only" 2½ mio NOK per winner, which is about 250.000 USD or 210.000 EUR.
It's still a big scandal, but I doubt people would consider themselves filthy rich for this kind of money. Well, I wouldn't.