Mohan Srivastava's Scratch-Off Lottery Hack

Canadian statistician Mohan Srivastava noticed that the printed patterns on the outside of a particular scratch-off lottery game were not truly random, and he turned that into a powerful prediction tool. By analyzing the visible numbers and their layout, he found a way to predict which tickets were likely winners before scratching them. His method reportedly let him identify a winning ticket about 90 percent of the time, far above pure chance. Once he demonstrated how his prediction system worked, lottery officials pulled the game, since its design made it vulnerable to anyone who could see the same pattern.

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