Canadians & MathI recently entered a sweepstakes to win a free mass spectrometer for my company and as I was reading through the rules and such, I came across this:

In order for Canadian residents to qualify to win the Grand Prize..., the selected entrants will be required to answer a mathematical skill-testing question, without assistance of any kind (whether mechanical or otherwise)... In the event that a selected entrant cannot be reached, or a Canadian entrant's answer to the mathematical skill-testing question is incorrect...,the selected entrant will be disqualified and another entrant will be selected in the place of the disqualified entrant by random draw.

Can anyone explain this to me? Are Canadians really dumb or something?

UPDATE: After a quick google search, I found that in Canada it is unlawful to have a sweepstakes that is a game of pure chance--there must be skill involved. So the winner of the sweepstakes typically has to answer some simple math question like, "What is 10+5?" Some skill, eh?

Posted by Hey Paul   |   Thursday, March 23, 2006