Yuri Gurevich | Impugning Alleged Randomness

Yuri Gurevich from Microsoft Research will talk about individual sequence randomness in a legal context.
  • When Oct 30, 2017 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam / UTC100)
  • Where L016
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According to a 1985 issue of New York Times, "The New Jersey Supreme
Court today caught up with the Essex County Clerk and a Democrat who
has conducted drawings for decades that have given Democrats the top
ballot line in the county 40 times out of 41 times." But the clerk
wasn't found guilty. Here's another case of that sort, from a
different part of the world. In the 1980s the Israeli tax authorities
encouraged the public to request invoices from  plumbers, painters,
etc. and send the invoices in; big prices were ruffled off.
Surprisingly, a big price went to none other than the Director of
Customs and VAT. The operation collapsed but the director wasn't
punished.

You may be convinced that such lotteries are rigged, but how would
you argue that in the court of law? Yes, the probability of the
suspicious outcome is negligible. However the probability of any
particular outcome is negligible. What can you say? We attempt to
furnish you with an argument.

Only most rudimentary probability theory will be presumed.