AP flunks AP statistics

Check out this gem from my local TV station and the Associated Press:

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The odds of the same Oklahoma Pick-3 lottery
numbers coming up two nights in a row are a million to one, but that’s
just what happened last weekend. [my emphasis]

Sounds like somebody at
the AP flunked out of his freshman statistics class.  The chance
of the numbers 1-7-5 coming up two nights in a row is
a one in a million, but there are a thousand different possible numbers,
from 0-0-0 to 9-9-9, and any of those sequences could come up twice in
a row.  Multiplying 1000 by 1/1,000,000 gives a chance that some number comes up twice in a row to be 1/1000.  My condolences to University
of Central Oklahoma mathematician Larry Lucas, who gave reporters the
1/1000 figure, which they ran with, and then stuck his name in the
story.

Now I have to apply Michael Crichton’s Murray Gell-Mann rule (in "Why Speculate?") to everything I read from the AP.  Doofusses.

Oh, and saying "a million to one" is properly an odds
statement, which should be the number of losing outcomes to the number
of winning outcomes, or 999,999 to 1.  Double doofusses.