The 31 students in the Elements of Statistics class taught by San Antonio College mathematics professor Gerald Busald have created what he believes to be the first ever ranking of all state lotteries in the United States. The rankings, based on disclosure and fairness policies, are the result of a major semester project and may be found on the class website at http://www.sacstat.org/.

"As a direct by-product of the project and student comments, Texas has just this week added a Spanish language section to their website," said Busald.

Christina Hernandez, the student who first brought this issue to the class attention, said "Excellent! This is very exciting!"

Each student rated every lottery website, and the class sent out surveys to gather more information about the various state lotteries and their practices. Some of the many criteria they used for the rankings include:  odds disclosures on tickets, billboards and websites; procedures for closing scratch-off games when all top-level prizes have been claimed; minority language availability on websites; percent of sales returned to players in the form of prizes; and top price point of scratch-off games sold.

Busald said, "I'm hopeful that the release of the rankings will cause other states to implement some of the positive changes recently implemented in Texas, and also cause Texas to make additional positive changes. In addition, I¹m excited for my students, because they have worked so hard on this project for the last 15 weeks."

SAC Mathematics Professor Gerald Busald's Elements of Statistics class have produced the first ever ranking of U.S. lotteries.
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For more information, contact Professor Busald
at work (210-733-2470), cell (210-289-3669), or home (210-438-5593).