HAVING A better understanding of maths could help prevent your being deceived by a scam artist. It helps show the improbabilities presented by a cheater and identifies what you are not being told.
So argues Nadia Baker, the schools outreach officer with the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University and the Winton Programme for the Public Understanding of Risk.
She gave a talk to secondary school students yesterday at Macsi at the University of Limerick, the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry. Ms Baker’s talk was part of the ongoing National Maths Week activities.
Scammers had made extensive use of the internet to perpetrate frauds and people got caught up in them, she said in advance of her talk.
“If something seems too good to be true, it probably is,” she added. “Maths gives you the skills to look more closely to find out what you haven’t been told.”
She described one scam where a person sends out many e-mails claiming to know the winner of a horse race before it is run.
Each group of people is given a different horse’s name. After the first race the scammer only contacts those who received the winning horse’s name.
This process is repeated several times, with the fraudster only contacting those who have been given the names of winning horses.
By the end of a week, those who have seen repeated correct answers might assume the scammer has an inside track, but if they seek to buy these skills they will be sorely disappointed.
“It is all about looking for the missing information.”
On risk assessment, Ms Baker continued, she said it was one of the hardest issues to address.
“It is important that students gain a better understanding of risk and probability.”
Nowhere is this more true than in relation to the lottery. People have a one in 14 million chance of winning the Lotto.
This means that a person would have to buy a single Lotto ticket every day for 269,000 years before using up all the possible numbers.
“To win the Lotto you will have to be really, really lucky or have some trick or live to be 269,000 years old and live long enough to win,” she said.
Ms Baker referred to something that, on the face of it, seemed a remarkable coincidence but in fact was only simple probability.
It would seem a long shot to meet someone with the same birthday date as you, but in fact in a random group of just 23 people, there is a greater than 50/50 chance of meeting someone with the same birthday as you.
You can bet on it.
Today's puzzle
SQUARE ROOT BIRTHDAYS
The mathematician Augustus De Morgan was very proud that in the year 1849 he was 43, because 1849 is the exact square of 43. There are people alive today who will also have this mathematical privilege.
In which year do you need to have been born so that at some time during your life, the current year will be the square of your age? Also, when will this happen next?
Answer to yesterday’s puzzle:
Fifteen jumps are needed for the frogs to change place. A detailed method for accomplishing this can be found on the Maths Week website, www.mathsweek.ie
Puzzle from Matt Parker, Australian maths communicator