'The numbers might seem random, as if the gold has just been scattered, but they're actually not random at all. 'My job is to make sense of those results,' he says. Each sample gives a different estimate of the amount of mineral underground.

A typical assignment for Srivastava goes like this: A mining company has multiple samples from a potential gold mine. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day job, which involves consulting for mining and oil companies. When he talks about a subject he's interested in-and he's interested in many things, from military encryption to freshwater fossils-his words start to run into each other.Īs a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. He has a neatly trimmed beard and a messy office. Srivastava speaks quietly, with a slight stammer. 'This is the smallest amount you can win, but I can't tell you how excited it made me,' he says. Srivastava matched up each of his numbers with the digits on the boards, and much to his surprise, the ticket had a tic-tac-toe. If three of 'Your Numbers' appeared on a board in a straight line, you'd won. The goal was to scrape off the latex and compare the numbers under it to the digits on the boards. On the left was a box headlined 'Your Numbers,' covered with a scratchable latex coating. Its design was straightforward: On the right were eight tic-tac-toe boards, dense with different numbers. The second ticket was a tic-tac-toe game. 'I thought, 'This is exactly why I never play these dumb games.'' 'The first was a loser, and I felt pretty smug,' Srivastava says. He fished a coin out of a drawer and began scratching off the latex coating.

The tickets were cheap scratchers-a gag gift from his squash partner-and Srivastava found himself wondering if any of them were winners. Mohan Srivastava, a geological statistician living in Toronto, was working in his office in June 2003, waiting for some files to download onto his computer, when he discovered a couple of old lottery tickets buried under some paper on his desk.

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