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Honesty is the best policy. It's a lesson that math Professor Gerald Busald has been teaching for a long time - not a lesson he had to teach his students, but a lesson that his students have helped him teach to the Texas Lottery Commission.
Since 1997, Busald and his students have been active in provoking change, not only in the way the lottery is advertised, but the attitude in which the commission approaches consumer knowledge.
The most recent changes, a list of eight suggestions from Busald and his students, were brought to the commission's attention June 28. The commission responded at an Oct. 18 meeting and discussed it again Jan. 30.
"I wanted to bring the best ideas of what's done around the country to Texas, as far as the most disclosure, the most honest practices," he said.
The first was a change to the language used on lottery billboards. There are 124 billboards statewide that read "Estimated Jackpot" but by June 1, the billboards will be fitted with the words "Estimated Annuitized Jackpot."
"Officially, 'annuitized' is not a word. It's a lottery word," Busald said. "It conveys the idea that the prize is paid over time."
The word is already used on billboards for the state lottery in Virginia. The change was agreed upon at a cost to the state of only $18,500.
The second suggestion was that the back of the online roll stock include the odds of winning the top prize, rather than just the overall odds of winning anything at all. The text also will be adjusted from 4.6-point type to 6-point type, increasing its readability and decreasing its wordiness.
The third suggestion was implemented Dec. 14, and the estimated cash value option for jackpot games is now shown beneath the current estimated annuitized jackpot on the lottery commission Web site, www.txlottery.org.
At the Jan. 30 commission meeting, lottery operations Director Michael Anger provided commissioners with a graphic depicting the cash value option in a smaller-type font. Commission Chair James A. Cox requested that the type size be equal to that of the estimated annuitized jackpot. The change was made soon after the meeting.
Similar to the third suggestion, it also was suggested that the cash value option be shown on the Mega Millions Web site, but since it is not owned by the Texas Lottery alone, Anthony Sadberry, executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission, will have to discuss the matter with the executive directors of other Mega Millions states.
Busald is most excited about the implementation of the fifth suggestion, not only because it was his own idea, but because Texas will now be the first state to print the estimated cash value of the jackpot prize on every lottery ticket in which the cash value option is selected.
The lottery commission staff expressed concern over the idea at the Oct. 18 meeting, explaining that it may confuse players if the cash value were to be printed on the lottery tickets; but Cox said, "It doesn't seem that 'confusing' is a good reason not to do it."
The change will be made by the end of the fiscal year at no cost to the state because the lottery operator, GTECH, is responsible for providing the ticket stock.
The sixth suggestion involved adding the odds of winning a top prize to the back of instant tickets, while again enlarging the font size of the text. It will take about a year to cycle through the inventory of existing games.
The seventh suggestion involved printing the cash value of annuity prizes on instant ticket games that contain annuity prizes.The idea was put on hold for further discussion because current games only offer annuity prizes but not the cash value. Anger explained that this could lead to the disappointment of a winning customer who may have thought they were going to win the total cash value, rather than smaller amounts paid over time.
The final suggestion also was a complicated one - to remove instant ticket games as soon as all top prizes have been claimed. Busald noted a specific game in which nearly every ticket that won one of the top-four prizes had already been claimed before the game was pulled from the shelf.
"In a sense, what this game had was people spending $10 to win a maximum prize of $100," Busald said at the Jan. 30 commission meeting. "Just because a player will continue to buy the game doesn't make it morally right to sell it to them."
Anger said that it would be difficult to do, because unclaimed winning tickets may already have been sold; but he did explain that some measures have already been taken to help alleviate the problem. Players with Internet access can check which tickets have been claimed at the commission's Web site - it is now updated nightly.
"I think we've taken some very positive steps forward, in not only the things we're doing, but the attitude that we have toward new ideas," Cox said.
Perhaps an even stronger testament of the commission's positive new attitude was Cox's comment to Anger: "I would challenge you to stay a step ahead of Professor Busald."
"My idea was to make Texas the best state as far as fairness and openness," Busald said. "It's fair to tell players what they're playing for and what the odds are. It's just reasonable to tell them."
It was Busald's MATH 1442, Elements of Statistics, students who first noticed a flaw in the commission's advertising for the Cash 5 game in 1997. The game advertised a top prize of $75,000, but the students found that the weighted average distribution to a top-prize winner was actually $59,373.
The commission removed all Cash 5 advertising after students brought the discrepancies to their attention. In the fall of 2000, Busald's students noticed that the printed odds of winning on a scratch-off ticket included break-even prizes - a prize that the students did not consider winning.
The Texas Lottery Commission agreed to include that fact on all future scratch-off tickets. "It's a pretty good batting average for trying to get a public agency to change," Busald said.
In November 2005, Busald was asked to become a member of the Texas Lottery Commission's Executive Search Committee.
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