Friday, February 21, 2025
Biostatistics professor and serial winner Michael Wallace on maximizing your odds in annual Tim Hortons contest.
Michael, an associate professor in Statistics and Actuarial Science, made headlines in 2020 when he figured out how to win the coffee chain’s newly digital Roll Up game 98 per cent of the time. That winning streak was the result of playing all his accumulated rolls in the middle of the night on the last day of the promotion. Though he only won free coffee and donuts, his high win rate got the attention of Tim Hortons. When they changed their algorithm, he kept playing, developing a new strategy in 2023 that resulted in another winning streak, and another round of media coverage.