• chevron_right

      Canadian statistics professor games Tim Hortons contest for 80-98% win rates

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 3 April, 2023 - 18:44

    Tim Hortons sign with Canadian-flag-style maple leaf insignia

    Enlarge / Tim Hortons is a coffee and donut chain popular with Canadians, Canadian-adjacent regions of the US, and statistics professors. (credit: Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)

    All you had to do, if you really wanted some free coffee and doughnuts, was wake up around 3 am each day and click on some virtual Tim Hortons coffee cups.

    It was 3:16 am, actually, that gave a University of Waterloo professor a roughly 80 percent win rate on Tim Hortons' Roll Up To Win game. That wasn't as good as the 98 percent Michael Wallace clocked in early 2020, when he discovered a quirk in the coffee chain's prize distribution scheme, but it still made for great lessons for his students.

    "I really like the fact that you can take data from the real world, run it through some math, and find patterns that describe what you see," Wallace told his university's news service . "It's a kind of magic."

    Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Tim Hortons coffee app broke law by constantly recording users’ movements

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 2 June, 2022 - 16:50

    Outside view of a Tim Hortons restaurant in Toronto shows the Tim Hortons logo and a maple leaf.

    Enlarge / A Tim Hortons in Toronto in May 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Roberto Machado Noa )

    Canadian investigators determined that users of the Tim Hortons coffee chain's mobile app "had their movements tracked and recorded every few minutes of every day," even when the app wasn't open, in violation of the country's privacy laws.

    "The Tim Hortons app asked for permission to access the mobile device's geolocation functions but misled many users to believe information would only be accessed when the app was in use. In reality, the app tracked users as long as the device was on, continually collecting their location data," according to an announcement Wednesday by Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The federal office collaborated with provincial authorities in Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta in the investigation of Tim Hortons.

    "The app also used location data to infer where users lived, where they worked, and whether they were traveling," the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said. "It generated an 'event' every time users entered or left a Tim Hortons competitor, a major sports venue, or their home or workplace."

    Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments