CHECKING NOT SO CAREFUL

Attention to detail is a crucial part of the job:

I’m a lawyer. I check these things regularly...

Let’s see just how closely everyone's favourite lawyer checks things. In this post, Jeremy quotes David Starkoff:

Winning division 1 in Oz 7 Lotto requires picking the seven winning numbers from 45: 45,379,620 combinations. Since you can buy a 12-game ticket for $12.70, the entry cost to buy every combination is therefore a shade over $48,000,000… This suggests that a brute force attack may be efficient: i.e., buying every combination and making a profit.

The important words in that extract, which Jeremy presumably checked carefully: “12-game ticket.” But Jeremy goes on to write:

I think he’s got the maths wrong by a factor of about ten. $12.70 multiplied by 45,379,620 is $576,321,174, not $48 million. Unless I’m missing something.

He has. He’s missed the fact that a 12-game ticket (there’s a clue in the name) plays 12 games, not just one. Alerted to this by a reader, Jeremy responds:

Ah – I didn’t know that.

Almost 24 hours later Jeremy finally corrected his post. Such admissions are rare indeed and should be savoured.

Update: Jeremy can't fact check a paragraph he quotes but takes journalists to task for not getting it right. Tee hee.