Mathematician Sues Ontario Lottery for $38 Million Jackpot Denial Over Skill-Testing Question
When contacted, the Ontario Lottery Commission stated they could not comment on ongoing legal matters but emphasized, “Ontario law mandates that lottery winners must answer a skill-based question correctly. Unfortunately, if the ticket holder provides an incorrect answer to the required fifth-grade math question, we cannot award the prize.”
The Math Problem in Question
Professor Blythe explained his side of the story: “The question was 1-2÷2÷2×2. According to ISO Standard 80000-2, the division symbol ÷ should not be used in complex expressions because it leads to ambiguity. The intended operation was unclear. It could not reasonably be division.”
The professor further elaborated, “Even if we assume it was division, there's still ambiguity. Some academic journals interpret a/bc as a/(bc), while others interpret it as (a/b)c. Given this lack of clarity, the only logical conclusion was that the expression was undefined. There wasn’t enough room on the form, so I used the common abbreviation NaN, which stands for ‘Not a Number.’”
Conflicting Results
This reporter was skeptical and decided to test the problem using three different calculators. Two returned an answer of 0, while one yielded 0.75. Clearly, the problem is more complex than it initially appears. However, none of the calculators returned NaN.
To further investigate, I sent the problem to a group of ten fifth-grade teachers. Four of them mentioned that they couldn’t read cursive writing. The teachers who attempted to solve the problem couldn’t agree on the answer, but they all concurred that the anonymous student's response was incorrect.
Lottery Commission’s Response
I then contacted the Ontario Lottery Commission again with our findings. Once more, they declined to discuss the specifics of the case but did comment, “In Canada, we follow the BEDMAS rule, or is it PODMAS? In any case, we’ve never heard of ISO standards.”
Conclusion
This case highlights a troubling state of our education system when a well-respected professor is unable to answer what is intended to be a simple fifth-grade math question.
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