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Patterns in Lottery Numbers
markmcb writes "Most everyone is familiar with the concept of the lottery, i.e., random numbers are selected and people guess what they will be for a cash prize. But how random are the numbers? Matt Vea has conducted a pattern analysis of the MegaMillions lottery, which recently offered a sum of $370M (USD) to the winner. Matt shows that the lottery isn't as random as it may seem and that there are 'better' choices than others to be made when selecting numbers. From the article, 'A single dollar in MegaMillions purchases a 1 in 175,711,536 chance of landing the jackpot ... a player stands a mildly better chance of winning a partial prize through the selection of weighted numbers.'" Includes some excellent charts of his analysis.
Not much in the way of conclusions...
"Interesting as these trends may be, they will not assist in making the odds of winning the MegaMillions lottery any better if the system is truly fair and random. However, in the event there is some peculiar factor skewing the ball selection such that any of these trends continue, a player stands a mildly better chance of winning a partial prize through the selection of weighted numbers."
Most lotteries (as opposed to raffles) have less than half the money spent by lottery ticket buyers going into the payout pool.
You're already losing by buying the ticket.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We need a "badatmath" tag.
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.
Interesting as these trends may be, they will not assist in making the odds of winning the MegaMillions lottery any better if the system is truly fair and random. However, in the event there is some peculiar factor skewing the ball selection such that any of these trends continue, a player stands a mildly better chance of winning a partial prize through the selection of weighted numbers.
These differences aren't that compelling. To me I would say, "Congratulations, you have found some deviation from equal frequency for all balls. But this would happen in any instance of drawing these balls."
I'm concerned that this has been an exercise in deviation in pseudo random systems. The same could be done with a computer simulation and similar results would be found.
I hate to say it but this study points out to me that the lottery is actually pretty much as close to random as it could get. In fact, the summary of the paper states that if there were some event to skew this, then you could achieve a small bonus: However, in the event there is some peculiar factor skewing the ball selection such that any of these trends continue, a player stands a mildly better chance of winning a partial prize through the selection of weighted numbers. However this peculiar factor can not only be identified but if it exists, it is highly unlikely it is anything even remotely observable.
My work here is dung.
I think the submitter purposely wrote the summary to mislead. It is clear from their conclusions that they haven't done anything that is being claimed in the summary; they only suggest in the end that if there were some sort of advantage in selecting certain balls, someone could take advantage of that (seems obvious).
This assumes that no changes are made drawing over drawing. How would you be aware that such changes are made? For instance, what if a fan, stirrer, or the balls are switched out, as one can suppose does happen. As you are not aware of these changes, you are back where you started from. This also supposes that the auditors that are supposed to ensure that the results are random aren't doing their jobs by performing rigorous testing. In that way, the lottery commission is opening it up to lawsuits by players alleging that the game is not fair. So while the research is interesting, it would be extremely difficult to actually use it in the real world, especially now that the work is public, which means that the behavior of the lottery is likely to change as a result.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
I have always wondered one thing about draws. Say you have a 50/50 type draw where you can enter as many times as you like. If you buy 2 tickets are your chances actually twice as great as if you just bought one? Or if you buy 100 tickets do you have a 100 times greater chance of winning?
-Xoltri
I wonder how much ANY random set of numbers would show patterns if one tried hard enough to find them.
Infuriate left and right
Fl. Lottery used to print which machine would be used for a particular drawing, and old drawing numbers - with machine that was used - in a nice column format (probably real easy to rip out of a web page, etc).
Now I'm not a math guy, but I *know* that all 50whatever balls aren't identical. Should there be some (very) slight preference for a particular ball, or set of balls, over a series of draws over time? I seem to remember an article in a Dragon magazine about dice and using math to find out if yours had a preference for a particular number...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I prefer my bad math in Power Point format.... err I guess it's Preso now.
Oh wait, just kidding...Keynotes the winner!!
So, where's the equation? I need to know so that I have a chance at winning my state's lottery. I'm a poor college student!
Closest I got to winning the lotto jackpot here was with 4 numbers, out of 6.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
And if you look up in the night sky, you'll see an archer, a bull, a big and a small dipper.
What's your point?
So that is the author of the Book "Winning Lottery Numbers" as seen on the Simpsons!
One of the slogans for the Illinois lottery used to be "you can't win if you don't play", but I figured every time I didn't play, I won $1. Its both stupid and ironic that many of the same people bitching about taxes pay this voluntary tax!
At the astronomical odds against winning, I figure my chances of finding a winning ticket on the ground are only marginally worse than my chances of buying a winning ticket. So rather than give extra money to the government so it will be funnelled to politically connected rich people, I just watch the ground.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'm broke and I got all 6 numbers out of 6.
:(
I invested in http://www.transmeta.com/
also at: http://www.uncoveror.com/lottery.htm
--
THE LOTTERY IS RIGGED
You may have heard that you are more likely to be hit on the head by a meteorite than to win the lottery. This is certainly so. Assuming that the game is honest, the odds are roughly one in several hundred million. Even with these odds, lottery commissions are not satisfied. The lottery is rigged.
The giant multi-state and individual state lotteries are more fixed than pro wrestling. The jackpots go up and up, with no winners. People get lottery fever. Millions nationwide are willing to wait in a line just like the ones for bread in the former Soviet Union for the pipe dream of striking it rich. The rigging works like this: super computers keep track of each combination sold, and then the ping-pong balls are weighted to assure that a losing combination comes up. On rare occasions, all possible combinations are sold, and they must let someone win. Only then is the game honest.
Why? The lottery, which is a state-run version of the Mafia's numbers racket, is a great money grab scam, as long as it brings in more than it pays out. In the past, lotteries were abolished because they lost money.
The worst part of this is whom it hurts. The poor and desperate are the most common victims of lottery fever. Children go hungry and senior citizens go without their medication because of it. People prone to gambling addiction also blow huge sums.
We spoke with an employee at a state lottery agency. We can not reveal his name or even which state, as some of the same gangsters who ran the numbers racket now run the lottery, and they would kill him.
"Yes, I personally am involved in it. Lottery ping-pong balls have a small valve, like a basketball or soccer ball, only it's very tiny, and nearly invisible. We use a hypodermic needle to inject heavier-than-air gasses such as radon into the balls we don't want to come up. At first, we tried helium in the ones we did want to rise, but they jumped up so quickly that it was obvious. Lotteries are raking in much more than if the games were honest, and people don't know they have literally no chance!"
"If you think about it logically, you certainly don't play anyway. You are betting that you can predict which six of 45 or more balls are going to come out of the hopper. In some games, the order even matters! It's a sucker's bet, and that's when it's honest! Most drawings are rigged, making the odds zero in infinity! The lottery is not only a tax on people who don't understand math; it is an unfair and unjust tax. Didn't we have the American Revolution over taxes like that?"
--
While you can analyse the numbers that come up, the interesting data isn't usually available to you: namely what numbers people are betting on. For example in the UK lottery it is known that about 10,000 people a week bet on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So that automatically is a really bad choice because if that combination came up, you would get £prize / 10,000.
Example: if lots of people bet on (eg.) birthdays, then you'd expect the people to select numbers > 31 less frequently, which means you could try to cover bets with numbers > 31 and have a greater payout. Without the distribution of betting numbers though you can't tell.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
A lot of people who win high sums of money end up broke. If you are not mature enough to know how to manage the money and fight off the inevitable "investment" requests then your windfall will not last long and you may end up worse off than you were before you won. Money is not happiness. Good friends and family are.
Any statistical deviation in the balls is going to be microscopic.
Rather, observe the following. When a progressive jackpot gets large enough, a single winner would have a positive expectation value, but multiple winners have negative value.
Thus what you need to do is not pick something that is "more likely", you need to pick combinations that normal players would NOT choose, as your odds of winning are the same, but your odds of having to share a win go way down.
EG, something like 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Given the raw stream of what numbers people choose, there are probably lots of such "less likely" patterns you could use.
Test your net with Netalyzr
OK, math nerds, help me out. Maybe I'm misremembering, but in a sample like this, isn't the statistical error basically sqrt(n)? So for the claimed 1078 drawings, sqrt(1078)/1078 is 3%. So I should be looking for "bumps" in the graph bigger than 3%, right? And I'm not seeing that. It looks like in all his charts, I can just draw a straight line through the mean, and my ±3% error bars cover all the variation.
What am I missing?
Article is slashdotted, so I can't go read it to see how relevant this really is.
I have known people that have used patterns and formulas to pick lottery numbers weekly and overall come out on top. Now this was with regular state lottery which has a far better chance of being won anyway. Also, it certainly wasn't anything they could live off of, wasn't consistent, and took a few thousand dollars that you could risk losing to get started with and keep spending monthly.
Overall, though, the guys that I have known who have done this sort of stuff have won, though. Not tons, maybe an average of a couple hundred dollars per month at best with the risk of losing thousands. Seems to be working so far, though.
Anything where you have better chances of being killed driving to get the damn thing than winning isn't worth the money...
Chance of dying from a car accident: 1 in 18,585
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
When that particular lottery drawing was in the news I came up with a conjecture about picking lottery numbers that would have a higher probability of winning. I'm not a statistician, but from my limited knowledge of Bayesian statistics I figured I could take the set of all possible picks, then from this list remove "subjectively unlikely" combinations such as all previous winning picks as well as combinations like all straits (1-2-3-4-5), flushes (10-10-10-10-10), and other weird coincidences (all primes, etc). Then pick a few random numbers from this reduced list. I never did any actual calculations but I'm curious as to whether 1) this would actually increase your odds of winning and 2) by how much.
2) You don't get an edge in the lottery by picking numbers that are more likely to come up; you get it by picking numbers that other players are less likely to choose (e.g. >31), so that you don't have to split your win with as many others.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
the chances of being struck by lightning are estimated at 1 in 700,000
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/wlightning.htm
The chances of being killed by honey bees of any sort are actually less than the chances of being hit by lightning, according to Center for Disease Control statistics.
http://stingshield.com/2000news.htm
Yet
A single dollar in MegaMillions purchases a 1 in 175,711,536 chance
Odds are on the lightning!
Let's simulate the history of MegaMillions in a computer, using a hardware random-number-generator that we trust to be completely random with an even distribution.
Examine the results and look for patterns. Odds are, you will see minor variations from "average." After all, if you flip a coin 1000 times, odds are you won't get exactly 500 heads and 500 tails.
Next, let's repeat this 100 times. Odds are you will see such patterns in most of the experimental runs, but the patterns will vary from run to run.
Think of the real-life MegaMillions lottery as a single experimental run.
How do you counter this?
You could slice-and-dice the MegaMillions into 100 "experimental runs" each consisting of a random 10% of actual drawings. While the overall trend of this slice-and-dice will reflect the real history of MegaMillions, the results of the individual "experimental runs" should vary enough to convince people that this is just a statistical fluke, or at least it's flukiness can't be ruled out.
In particular, let's slice MM into 10 time periods with an equal number of drawings. Odds are the most recent time period's statistical anomalies won't match those of earlier times.
The bottom line:
There is nothing to suggest the statistical anomaly of the history of MM so far will continue.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
the tax on people who can't do math.
Patterns? Oh sure there are patterns... But consider, if you look at the moon, you might see a face there too... there's a definite pattern there! Or if you look at clouds you might see familiar shapes.
The point of what I'm saying being that the human brain is the ultimate pattern recognition engine, and it's going to see patterns arising even when their really aren't any.
Any increased likelihood that using such "patterns" to predict the outcome of discrete random events will be statistically insignificant, compared to the number of actual possibilities.
Notwithstanding, otherwise discrete random events may potentially affect the outcome of other such events due to circumstances unrelated to the event being analyzed, such as the physical wearing down of certain equipment.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In other news, global warming has caused a decrease in Ninja population, while simultaneously increasing pirate population.
In other news Matt Vea's girlfriend was recently seen leaving a 7-11 screaming, "Just choose the goddammned numbers!"
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
What's the point of doing this kind of analysis if you're not going to calculate the probability that the balls used are unweighted? If you want to admire some random numbers, go and roll some dice - the interesting question is whether or not the pattern analysis can be put to use.
Ah the power of telling millions of people that they can cheat the odds on their local lotteries at once. ;)
If something obeys a human conceivable or recognizable pattern .. like 7 8 9 10 11 12 13, then I reckon a person is likely to play it.
.1% may think it's funny and choose consecutive numbers. They may have read somewhere that consecutive numbers have the same chance of popping up and non consecutive numbers.
.. I know people who use the word "password" as their password thinking it's secure because "nobody would ever guess the word password as being my password cause it's too obvious".
Now you may think people would say "it's too unlikely consecutive numbers would happen". And you would be correct for 99.9% of the population.
But
Now if you don't think people would do something like that
What stuck with me though we a couple of ideas:
- What happened in the past has no influence over what will happen in the future. You may have flipped seventy-five heads, but the odds of the next penny landing head or tails is still 50/50.
- The decision whether to make a bet in any game is based on a variety of factors - the size of the bet, the size of the possible prize, and the odds of winning. No one of those three is enough to make a decision, you need to know all three.
In life, as in games, you have to make decisions based on real odds, not of conjecture or media speculation. Where's the bigger risk? A falling meteor, or getting hit by a city bus? Food poisoning or a terrorist attack?Three Squirrels
Reduced odds of sharing the win with someone else.
I win $1 every week!
The only ticket's I've ever bought were to give out as party favors.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A more interesting statistical analysis would include a survey of commonly chosen numbers. You could actually improve your statistical payout if you could reduce the chance of splitting the pot with someone else.
1. Don't play.
2. Don't play unless the present value of this week's expected total payout after taxes is less than this week's pay-in.
Here's an example of when it's okay to play:
The odds of winning Mega Millions are 175,711,536.
If the net present value of the rollover prize is high enough that you buying 175,711,536 tickets and nobody else playing will win you at least $175,711,536 after taxes, then you'd be smart to play.
Likewise, if you expect the players collectively to add enough so the expected total payout after taxes was less than the expected contribution that week, then it makes sense to play.
Unfortunately, big jackpots attract lots of players, frequently tipping the odds away from the gambler.
If you want good odds on a pure gamble, go to Vegas. At least with Roulette, you'll get back $36 of every $38 you wager.
In most jackpots, the real winners are the people running the lottery and the IRS.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are some lotteries that use a random number generator, which could have coding issues with their algorithms as some of them are on older systems. Any randomness linked to a clock or timer is never a good bet, as I'm sure many a programmer can attest to. There are indpendent groups that verify and test these generators - both on the drawing devices as well as the terminal side, to ensure your quick pick truly is "random." I put more faith into the old style of ping pong style balls. There are more than one set of draw machines and sets of balls, which are kept under lock and key, and chosen right before the televised draw. The balls are ecamined and weighed to ensure that they have not been tampered with. The only patterns that may occur is if the balls are loaded in the same numerical order into the mixer every time, but this can be mitigated with allowing the balls to mix for a few moments prior to actually drawing the numbers. Machines used for subsequent drawings, may result in duplicates to the previous draw, as the ball has just been released and may be towards the top - therefore more apt to climb the chute once more.
Rosencrantz: [flips coin which lands as 'heads'] 78 in a row. A new record, I imagine.
...
Guildenstern: Is that what you imagine? A new record?
Rosencrantz: Well...
Guildenstern: No questions? Not a flicker of doubt?
Rosencrantz: I could be wrong.
Guildenstern: Consider: One, probability is a factor which operates *within* natural forces. Two, probability is *not* operating as a factor. Three, we are now held within un-, sub- or super-natural forces. Discuss.
Rosencrantz: What?
Lottery: Tax for those people bad at math.
See my Home Theater
on people who are bad at math... it looks like this proves it.
When I used to work (decades ago) at a convenience store, it was the poorer folks who bought the most tickets: the poorer the more tickets they bought - just an observation and obviously I didn't see their W-2s. The lotteries are basically a tax on poor folks, because, let's face it; the more educated and subsequently, well to do, know that it's not worth it.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
As humans we think we can find patterns in true random events. Any correct prediction goes into the "told you so" column and re-enforces our believe. Any counter events go into dismissal. That is how the house of cards is built. Interestly, our local lottery is composed of a bunch of balls continuously mixed in a single spherical bin. The ball are always loaded in the same order, and picked at the same time. One's expecation would be that some numbers come up more than others. I have noticed will a small sample set of 52 draws that 4,7,21,33,35,42,45, and 48 show up more frequently than the other numbers. I wounder if this is the trap that causes most people to play. Note: The odd of winning are 1 in 14 million (pick 6 number from 49), and tickets are $2. So a $28 million jackpot is, in theory, a zero return investment (this is assuming you play forever -> beyond your years). Also, the prize money is only half of what is collected, the other half goes to the gov't.
attached to this story is more meaningful than at first glance, if any of you remember the movie
fractals, numerology, obsession, madness, religion, finding patterns in randomness, etc.
great movie if you haven't seen it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The frugal gambler can save big money by buying used lottery tickets. They cost a lot less, and the chances of winning are almost as good!
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Durango Bill's Applied Mathematics: Mega Millions Odds.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The only good advice I've heard is to choose numbers greater than 31. The reasoning is that many people play dates: birthdays, anniversaries, etc. If you do beat the astromical odds and actaully win, your odds of splitting the pot with someone else is marginally better if you don't choose date-like numbers.
Let's say there are 50 ping pong balls in the lottery bin. If somebody chooses number 1 anywhere on their lotto card then the conspirators need to inject radon into balls 2 through 50. If anybody chooses number 2 then the conspirators have to limit the radon to balls 3 through 50.
The only way to prevent somebody from winning, even if the radon were 100% effective, would be for one of the 50 numbers to be unchosen by all of the thousands of lotto players. Otherwise, the guaranteed appearance or nonappearance of any single ball could beat every number combination played. It's not the individual numbers that determine a winner, it's the combination.
The person who wrote that theory must be incredibly dumb or... joking. Ah, the other headlines at www.uncoverer.com include:
If only all the other stupid things I've heard today could be explained by humor. Never ascribe to humor that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Get 174,999,999 of your friends to help you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There's a really good Straight Dope on the topic, but typically, they have several batches of numbers and several machines. Presumably, there are (very slight) biases for each machine and number set. Assuming they never get changed out, and that you know which machine and which set are used every time, and you can get a large enough sample, you probably could come up with a solution that would be better than randomizing the numbers. Possible, just highly unlikely.
Plus, if the prize pool is 50%, then you'll need a bunch of wins. In sports betting, for instance, the casino gets 10% off the top. So you may have as many wins as losses, but you'll still be down due to the vig. You need to pull off something like 55% just to break even. Lotteries would be a little different, as most sports bets are 11-10 bets (bet 11 to make 10, assuming there are no odds), while lottery wins are significantly more than that (bet 1 to win 300M, for instance).
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Odds of winning jackpot == 1 / 175711536
Odds of not winning jackpot == 175711535 / 175711536
Odds of not winning jackpot any number of times in a row = (175711535 / 175711536) ^ N
Amount of times you enter in a row before your odds become 50/50 (overall)
(175711535 / 175711536) ^ N = 0.50
log(175711535 / 175711536,.50) = N
ln(.50) / ln(175711535 / 175711536) = N
N = 121793955.42368374 ~ 121793956
Assuming one were to play twice a week, the lottery is only a good bet if you played (lived) for 1171095 YEARS. "...but theres still a chance" -- HAH!
If lottery balls are weighted due to the fact that a 42 has more tape or paint then a 1, this could be solved by having each ball painted with a basic grid like an old fashion score board i.e. (88) on each ball. You would then simply paint blank spaces white and spaces to make the numbers black. Each ball would then be weighted exactly the same. ... Maybe they aren't meant to be the same any way.
2x weekly, 3 different lotteries available here = 6 chances to win @ $1 per ticket each week.
Money saved by not buying a ticket since I turned 18? $11,232
Now thats an emotional high I can enjoy every day!
That reminds me about an interesting project "global consciousness project", which based on years of randomly generated numbers says, that basically - when a lot of people think about the same thing - the standard deviation of randomly generated numbers is exceeded.
The random numbres are generated using eg. quantum-indeterminate electronic noise, and when there is a tsunami, or the pope died - the random numbers are suddenly not as random as expected.
Interesting stuff.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
However they do it, I have always asked myself one question about the UK lottery. Why is there a 30 minute delay (or more) between the tills closing and the actual draw itself? Why not do the draw 1 minute after the tills close?
Why the delay? I do think these type draws are 'managed' and the time period between tills closing and the draw is unanswered (no matter what 'official' explanation they come out with).
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and call you a LIAR.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Forget your subjective feelings. You're just as likely to win with 1-2-3-4-5 as 4-8-16-23-42 or 19-20-21-22-23 or any other combination. So you might as well play 24-25-26-27-28. Or 2-3-5-7-11. Or 11-13-17-19-23. Or 12-14-16-18-19.
If you think any of these combinations is better than any others (in terms of absolute likelihood of coming up, not in terms of actual prize winnings due to multiple winners sharing the jackpot), you shouldn't be gambling.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
To turn those numbers around:
You have to admit that driving to work 5 days a week has less of an impact (good or bad) on someone's lifestyle than getting killed in a car crash does (again, good or bad).
That the odds of ending up terminated on a highway are far higher than getting an "off the charts lifestyle impact" lottery payout doesn't seem to affect anyone's choice in making that daily drive.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I always just see a bunch of dots.
This guy's the limit!
The famous linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys in the 1970's, Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson.
He blew every cent he earned playing football on drugs and was arrested on sex and drug charges. When he was broke he found religion and got cleaned up. Later, he hit the lottery for $28 million.
This post assumes that the lottery numbers are chosen from one of those machines where they drop a bunch of balls into, and they use air to randomize them all.
Haveing worked as a bingo caller and in a bingo center for a few years, i've heard the craziest talk from people about how us workers are/were cheating. To be honest with you.. we're not cheating, but there "are" better chances of winning. Here is the reason why:
Depending on the machine that is used, either lighter or heavier balls will be sucked up more often. I honestly doubt that he companies who many the balls... have machines that PERFECTLY calibrate (perfectly = 100%, not 99.99%) the weight of the ball vs the ink on it to make sure that they are all 100% exactly the same weight. Next. The person who TOUCHS these lottery balls will leave greasy residue on the ball which will add weight. After the games, a lot of places will use alcohol to rub them clean. Sometimes this will change the weight of the ball too, especially if not all the grease from the fingers are taken off. After a few weeks / months of using the same balls, you actually WILL see a pattern show up.
That being said, those are bingo balls vs lottery ones, which means the bingo ones are touched much more often. Depending on how cheap those people are, they may change the balls out often, or never at all in which case a small pattern WILL emerge.
On the other hand, if they use new balls every time... the pattern emerges from how the company they get those balls from, weighs them. If it's before or after ink.. blah blah
As a final note: If you REALLY REALLY honestly think that you can win by figuring out the system, research the company that the balls come from, research how they ink / weigh them... research the TYPE of ink to see if it will help catch the wind from the machine or repel it more (more ink might mean less chance of being sucked up) ... and find out from the lottery company (from an insider of course, not what they tell you over the phone) how often they ACTUALLY change the balls out.
If you DO all of that, i will consider you another crazy gambling nutcase (or a math statistician... in which case you've got other issues)... But hey, if you win from it, all the more power to you.
Does this guy know there are multiple ball sets in these big games, that are "randomly" selected before each drawing?
Looking at statistical weighting of ball frequency in a huge aggregate is fine. But I'm guessing (but not betting) you can't translate it directly into predictions in the short term, because of this random set issue. Now, if you want to make multiple analyses based on the specific historical performance of each set, then you have something more practical. But then you need to buy multiple sets of tickets based on the multiple predictions you get. I don't think his data source will tell him what ball set was used.
(Early on, when Lotto Texas was new, I used to guess 2 or 3 of the numbers based on simple frequency analysis, in every single drawing. But they kept adding ball sets. And Texas did tell people which ball set they used. After the fact, of course. And then I think they changed the number of balls picked. So I gave up my paper trials.)
I'm just saying. I don't care about $5/month, but if those guys win, and I'm still at this $@#%ing desk, that'll be bad.
It's not gambling, it's "gloating ex-co-worker insurance."
ceci n'est pas un sig.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
A System!
How many people who hang out on /. have friends who really like them? Quoth Office Space, "What would I do if I had a million dollars? Two chicks at the same time."
And, you know, if you had a million dollars you could probably hook that up. I mean, you can buy a lottery ticket, or put a buck in the panties of a stripper, and one of them actually gives you a decent chance of getting laid.
[Ego]out
Remember the story about a larger than usual number of people having a winning ticket?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/01/national/main684584.shtml
Still your right, the numbers chosen are not published, but with the "ball" method being used at many lotteries how would knowing what they choose really affect your chance of winning anything substantial?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Back in the early 20th century, the mob used to run a kind of informal lottery. It was called a "numbers game". There were places (like barbershops) where people could pick a number from 1 to 1000, and if their number came up, they won. The mob typically paid out between 800-to-1 and 600-to-1. This meant that the mob paid out 60-80% (and kept 20-40%) of the money people initially paid. On the other hand, most state lotteries only pay out about 50% of earnings, making them a worse bet than going with the mob.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/underground/1114undergroundpm.html
Every number has an equal chance of being pulled. That's a fact. Playing to these "weighted numbers" doesn't increase your odds at all; in fact, your odds are theoretically decreased by playing the numbers that have been pulled more often, because it is more likely that you'll see the less often pulled numbers pulled next time In other words, if I flip a coin 10 times and see Heads 10 times, that's not a guarantee that the 11th time will be heads; in fact, the probability of getting 11 heads is so small that you'd be better off betting on tails. After all, if you flip the coin 10 million times you should have about 5 million tails (but you can't say anything about a coin only flipped 10 times because the sample size is too small). The lottery has been done a finite number of times, therefore the article's interpretation of statistics is nonsense.
...is that the patterns of stars, planets, and constellations you see in the night sky is not random at all, but rather are arranged by a very intricate system of mathematical functions which describe all the interactions of all those objects and include their wildly varying velocity vectors, sizes, densities, masses, and distances from one another and they are not contained in a fixed size and shape container where frequent collisions will affect their positions as seen by a viewer here on this planet.
The lotto balls are much more matched in size, shape, mass and density to each other, and they are contained in a relatively small, fixed size container respective in ratio of the volume of all the balls to the volume insode the container, where extremely frequent collisions between the balls will profoundly affect the probability of which ones will get picked by the picking mechanism.
Now we have statisticians trying to figure out a smarter way to pay the "stupid tax"?
I wish that the U.S. would institute a billion dollar lottery as the only form of taxation. 'course, it'd be regressive.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
in this thug's farts.
Please peer review articles before posting as stories.
Ditto For Wolfram's Universal Whatchamacallit.
Thanks for nothing
Your assertion is absolutely correct if one assumes that the lottery is not rigged. However, if the lottery is rigged, the the analysis shows what lottery numbers have been rigged most often :). Now does that mean anything for your next selection? Probably not, unless you have some additional insight into the ticket sales and selection of numbers on those tickets.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I could see where there might be patterns depending on how often they change the balls and clean the insides of the machines.
Also there's a book about rigging the lotto called The Winner by David Baldacci. He gets a job cleaning the machines and takes 2 sprays that repel each other. Puts one inside by the exit hole and the other on all the balls but the one he wants to come up.
...is that the patterns of stars, planets, and constellations you see in the night sky is not random at all, but rather are arranged by a very intricate system of mathematical functions which describe all the interactions of all those objects and include their wildly varying velocity vectors, sizes, densities, masses, and distances from one another and they are not contained in a fixed size and shape container where frequent collisions will affect their positions as seen by a viewer here on this planet.
The lotto balls are much more matched in size, shape, mass and density to each other, and they are contained in a relatively small, fixed size container respective in ratio of the volume of all the balls to the volume insode the container, where extremely frequent collisions between the balls will profoundly affect the probability of which ones will get picked by the picking mechanism.
Spock!
You're rambling again.
who only play when the jackpots are GIANT. Apparently, winning $200 million is worlds different than winning $20 million. Not to mention that since more people are playing for the $200 million, you have a better (worse?) chance of their being multiple winners. Oi.
What about the Crusades and Roger Ebert? Or are those only visible at the planearium?
I used to eat and drink at a now-closed bar named George Rank's. Great food, reasonable prices, great staff. They had a free drawing every Thursday; whenever you came in and bought food or drink you got a ticket, limit of one per day per patron per bartender. You had to be there to win - If the winning ticket's owner wasn't there at the time of the drawing, the bartender would call him or her on the phone and everyone in the bar would yell LOSER! Then the pot went up by fifty bucks for the next week's drawing.
I ate lunch there every day, and stopped on the way home for a beer. So I wound up having 10-14 tickets in the bowl on Thursday. I believe I held the record for winning the most pots there. I figure that Dave, the bar's owner, paid a large part of my eye operation (click the sig for details).
I often remarked that I could win more than the fifty bucks just by not going there. Oddly, right after I started going to a different bar closer to my new home, Rank's closed up for good.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
$1 per week invested in developing markets could pay you $120,000 after 25 years. It also happens to improve the lifestyle of those living in the developing markets.
Deleted
And if you look up in the night sky, you'll see an archer, a bull, a big and a small dipper.
I live in the Southern Hemisphere, you insensitive clod!
- T
Actually, I buy lottery tickets because I like thinking about what I would do with all that money. It's just somehow different when you imagine what you would do with millions of dollars when you have an actual chance of getting that money. I already had my chance at $100,000 in POWERball (1 in 12 million odds), but I didn't have a ticket. I always play my birthday and age, and 25 for the powerball. My birthday and age hit but not the powerball, but I hadn't bought a ticket in two weeks. That was a 'mild' emotional low :)
I cringe every time I hear someone say that lotteries are taxes on people who are bad at math. Those people don't seem to realize that the lottery is a game, not an investment, and that most people who play (gambling addicts excepted) do so because they enjoy it.
Then again, when someone says that, it's usually because they feel like being smug, not because they want to add anything to the discussion.
great movie if you haven't seen it When I first read your comment, what immediately came to mind was this movie (which, you'll recall, also involves the same mysterious number), and I wanted to strangle you to death with my bare hands. Glad to see you're talking about Pi, which is an excellent film.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
In other words, even if the expected payout is positive, buying one lottery ticket is still a bad idea because you are going to lose. If you buy the ticket, you will be out $1; you can be as certain of that as you are of anything else you will ever encounter in your life.
Buying all the lottery tickets, on the other hand...
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
From the article, it is impossible to ascertain whether or not the equipment used to generate the random sequence has remained identical over the years. On that basis alone, this article is meaningless.
I was quite amused when I first heard of it. I d onot know if it has ever actually been done, however.
Pick some random stock, send email to 2*10 suckers that it will go up, and to an equal number of suckers that it will go down.
Whichever direction it moves, divide that batch of suckers in two, pick some other random stock, send half email taht it will go up and half email that it goes down.
Repeat until you have only a few suckers left. They will see you as a genius who has correctly predicted the last {n} stock moves correctly. It may be the final sucker, or the last 2, or 4, etc.
Now tout a stock you have just bought and make some money!
Infuriate left and right
And of course that doesn't tell you what portion of the administrative cost are boondoggle - a few years back I looked into bidding on upgrading Oregon's state lottery network from X.25 to something modern, and it was a total scam - reducing the costs would mean that the agency handling the network would get less money, so they didn't want that kind of upgrade.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I submit TFA is a conclusive refutation of John Edwards' claim that every American should go to college.
The patterns are only worthwhile if they give information. They only give information if they're statistically significant. The basic standard for testing for significance is the chi-square test. There is no chi-square test of any kind applied to the data in the article. Therefore, the article is as informative as a 404.
I admit I got bored before getting through the whole thing, but the distribution of winning numbers ranged from between +2 to -3 standard deviations from the mean. That isn't exactly pointing to any numbers with a substantially-higher probability of getting chosen. Pretty Darn Random covers the results pretty well.
Congratulations, you've just explained The Bible Code.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The mods are idiots for modding him down. The mod probably suffers from understanding statistics and is just angry that his ticket lost.
I didn't win the green suit, M-16 rifle, and two-year all-expenses-paid vacation to exciting tropical Vietnam, or the grand prize magic bullet with my name on it, and since my number was high enough to get classified as 1-H, I didn't even win the third-prize government-health-care physical exam. Haven't bought another ticket from those bastards since then.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Help me out if i'm missing something here... But $1 buys you a 1 in 175 million chance of winning $370 million. That's better than 2:1 odds FOR you... In other words.... buy $175 million in tickets to have a "sure bet" and you automatically win $370 million. That's a $195 million profit. Of course, minus taxes, it's only $80 million in profit... ????? I've never see a lotto where the odds against were lower than the jackpot... that's not supposed to happen... SI
Plus thats in year 170,002,007 dollars.
IIRC some Australian firm bought a high percentage of the available combinations, increased the expected time to payuout, and won big for thier investors.
Another way to look at the problem is that the state's trying to make money, and the statistical properties are simple enough that if they're at least vaguely competent they'll keep the odds correct, and they'll also hire enough auditors to make it hard to get away with deliberately rigging the game. It's much easier to scam the system by getting a sweetheart deal running the lottery terminal network, selling "lucky winning number" books at convenience stores, or telling the winners that you're a corrupt Nigerian official's widowed mother who needs help.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I always just see a bunch of dots.
Just like when I was a kid and I got one of those 'split beaver' magazines... I got out my magnifying glass... imagine my disappointment when all I could see was dots!!!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The histogram charts seem to reveal that you should pick certain balls to increase your chance of winning but this analysis is fundamentally flawed.
Why does 7 appear most frequently? Because everybody *thinks* it's lucky. Notice that 13, a number that a majority of suspicious people believe is unlucky, has about the lowest frequency of wins.
But does believing a number is lucky or unlucky make it so?? In this case... Yes. The numbers published are the winning numbers. For each pot win there are many pot losses that were not analyzed. These losses are what leads to a build up of the pot. The game could yield 13 at exactly the same rate that it yields 7s, but when it yields 13 it is less likely to have a winning ticket because most people avoided 13 and thus it appears less frequently in the list of published winners. Similarly, when it picks seven there is a greater chance that a winning ticket existed because most people pick "lucky 7".
I'm very certain that if you looked at all draws, every game and didn't care about winners or losers then you would see a very, very even distribution of numbers chosen. Weight of the ink and all that garbage is going to be negligible compared to the impact physics imposed during mixing. (And I would be surprised to find that the MegaMillions lottery commission hasn't balanced the balls to a very fine degree by now... just in case.)
As proof of my argument, I submit that for the past 246 draws the number 13 has actually been picked 24 times while 1 has only been picked 20 times. For 56 balls, the chance of being chosen in a draw of 6 balls is 10.714% and therefore we would expect each ball to have appeared 26.36 times. Further the analysis curves of ball 1 through 6 are useless as well. Is it any wonder that ball 1 has a greater frequency than ball 13?? No, because the balls are listed in numerical order, not the order chosen. Very few balls are going to beat 1 for the ball #1 position. This poster needs to go back and take a basic course in probability before wasting our time.
Basically, if you had picked all the "bad" numbers that this study revealed then you would have "scooped" a lot of the pots that had no winning ticket purchased and you would have prevented some of the enormous pots from ever occurring.
An interesting question though is why has ball 47 been picked only 11 times so far? This is well under the expected 26.3. It would be worth computing, given an even distribution, what the chances are of having a ball picked only 11 times in 246 draws. Sort of like what are the chances of Gildenstern flipping a coin heads up 94 times? It's not that it can't happen, it's just HIGHLY improbable. So much so that other improbable circumstances become worthy of assuming to be at play (such as death.) I wonder what the probability for 11 times is and therefore how much should we consider other circumstances affecting its behavior.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Spend $5 on lottery - negligible negative impact.
Don't spend $5 that my wife requested I spend on lottery, after explaining the statistical realities, the economic unfairness, telling her that she's just not "getting" the point, and being informed of what I wasn't going to be "getting" tonight - MASSIVE negative impact.
And yes, in effect I am buying sex for $5. Smilin' all the way.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Was anyone else expecting the article to somehow involve the number 23?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
"The only way to prevent somebody from winning, even if the radon were 100% effective, would be for one of the 50 numbers to be unchosen by all of the thousands of lotto players."
--
Well, exactly. And the computer keeping track of the all the combinations that were chosen, tells you which number is that 'unique' unchosen number. That is the ball you inject. The seemingly ridiculous 'uncoverer.com' article makes this clear, methinks.
It is well known that people do not pick numbers at random and if several winners have to share in a lottery, there are better or worse numbers. It is also well known that the numbers that win are completely random and all seeming patterns are just statistical annomalies that happen all the time. And third, it is well known that most people have no clue about statistics and tend to see patterns or meaning were there is none at all.
Summary: Nothing to see here, move along.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Drawing trend lines like what is done in this article shows that the author has no idea of the underlying theory. The fact that the balls are numbered does not mean that it reveals any useful information by charting as done in the article.
Charting how many times each ball has been drawn against with the corresponding ball number, and then add some kind of trend lines (of #draws against #ball) is misleading and will not reveal any information about future outcomes of the lottery. All the ball labels are interchangeable and since it is very unlikely that they are all drawn an equal number of times, it is most likely that you'll be able to show trends that show higher chances of getting drawn as ball number increases (or decreases or whatever).
Just to explain the point, lets go back to the day where all the balls were labeled. At that time, there was 50 identical balls with no labels and 50 labels with numbers 1 thru 50. At that time, the balls could have been assigned different numbers that - by accident turned out to place the highest label (50) on the most frequent ball, 49 on the second most frequent ball, and so forth. The result would be a much steeper trend line, telling us that we were "lucky" when the labels were assigned, given the results to date. Any future results will still be evenly distributed.
One might argue that this analysis could tell if the balls are not equally likely to be drawn (due to physical defects), but in that case it is necessary to do a plain multivariate test with the hypothesis that all balls are from the same distribution.
The first thing you learn in finance or financial analysis is "past results are not a predictor of future results".
I can't imagine the number of times the prof had to repeat this to the class that believed that just because the probability of flipping a coin is equal over infinite flips, they automatically called the opposite of the most common past result.
They took 1078 combinations and used them to look for patterns in something with over 175 million combinations. It's been a while since I took statistics, but isn't that sample size way way WAY too small?
He should not be looking at winning numbers but at every drawing. This only seems to point out that people have a tendency to pick certain numbers more than other.
My math mind says the odds are the same everytime regardless of the history of the numbers drawn.
The other side of my brain says "you create your own reality" and quantum math kicks in. I start screaming as loud and as for long as I can.
I sometimes ask a friend how much he has spent in the long term vs. how much money he has won -- sort like telling a smoker how much I don't spend on cigarettes. It's not really fair of me to do this because both gambling and cigarettes are addictive. But, I remind my friend every once in a while anyways.
Your relativity interests me.
I am an ignorant fool who wants to learn relativity of stocks.
-- Micheal Bloomberg
I invented* "inverse Lotto" years ago. It goes like this:
Choose $5 worth of numbers in your local lottery.
Write them down, but DON'T buy a ticket.
Watch the draw on TV.
If they didn't draw your numbers, you've just won $5!
If they did, you've just lost $370 million (or whatever.)
* although I'm sure I'm not the only one to have thought of this
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Finally, a story I can actually USE
This article has funny pictures, but there really is nothing to see here. The numbers are pretty random. Compensating for the four (ouch) different types, I get an overall p-value of 0.792. This means there is absolutely NO statistical significance.
Number 53 is most frequent and number 55 least frequent, if you compensate for their possible occurrence. Quite uninteresting if you ask me.
The authors could also have drawn the numbers themselves and come up with similar results...
You can test it yourself if you have R, and generate a much better picture, if you use the following code:
big=read.table("big.dat",sep="%",fill=T)
big$date=as.Date(apply(big[,1:3],1,paste,collapse="-"))
big$type=ifelse(big$date>"1999-1-13",ifelse(big$date>"2002-3-15",ifelse(big$date>"2005-06-22",4,3),2),1)
big$maxnorm=c(50,50,52,56)[big$type]
big$maxspecial=c(25,35,52,46)[big$type]
maxnorms=table(big$maxnorm)
p=rep(0,56)
for(i in 1:nrow(maxnorms))
p[1:as.numeric(names(maxnorms)[i])]=p[1:as.numeric(names(maxnorms)[i])]+maxnorms[i]*5
maxspecial=table(big$maxspecial)
for(i in 1:nrow(maxspecial))
p[1:as.numeric(names(maxspecial)[i])]=p[1:as.numeric(names(maxspecial)[i])]+maxspecial[i]
p=prop.table(p)
allnum=unlist(big[,5:10])
t=table(allnum)
chisq.test(t,p=p)
plot(t/p)
Get big.dat at http://www.state.nj.us/lottery/data/big.dat
P
To quote Dave Ramsey (http://www.daveramsey.com/) - a nationally syndicated radio show host and best selling author in the area of personal finance.
"The lotto is a tax on the poor and a tax on people who can't do math."
Down here in Australia - the quick picks are a real gamble - they might or might not do what you say, but I do know they don't always cover every number.
This Saturday night is a $30m draw and I just bought my ticket out of here for fun and maybe profit. I haven't checked, but have had these tickets before and I know that even with 144 (24*6) numbers you don't always end up with at least one of every 45 available.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Sorry your dad didn't get to spend the money on cigarettes and stuff. But if the money went to a poor country, I expect it still helped someone even if it was fraudulently obtained. When something like this happens, some people will say "see, you shouldn't give, it does no good" and others will say "wow, they really need money over there!"
Although it would require crunching a *lot* more data (which he probably can't get his hands on), I think it would be more instructive to look at the distribution of numbers chosen by players?
Since you have to share the pot with all other winners, choosing common numbers (like the date, say), can increase your odds of having to share... which probably affects the expected value of your ticket *vastly* more than any statistical anomalies in the distribution of winning numbers.
The odds are 175MM to 1, and they, basically, lie about the NPV of the annuity -- discount the advertised payout by 45% to get the after-tax cash value of the payout. So with these numbers, the expected return on $1 is, aw, who cares, about $1.10. Point is, once the pot gets big enough, a rational person will play the lotto.
too small?
FAQs are evil.
So on a technicality, they did right: all the non-payout money (minus expenses) went into the education budget. But the total funding for education didn't rise (except for the single initial bump).
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
In high school in the mid 80's, my math lesson taught me that all the balls in the lottery had an equal chance of being drawn. Furthermore, over time and sufficient draws, all the balls would be selected equally, or close enough. "Lay people" struggled to pick lucky numbers, and it was quite popular to pick numbers which had been chosen a number of times in recent weeks. But not me, I was educated. I formulated the reverse theory: that numbers that had been neglected were "overdue" and more likely to be picked in the future, to preserve equality and randomness. Eureka! I toiled for months, on paper at first, then on my first PC's. I learned how to program in Pascal just to further my project. I scanned newspaper microfiche and requested data from the Lotto corp. In the end I assembled over 10 years worth of winning Lotto 639 numbers, thousands of them, and made my computations of weighting. I then began systematically betting small amounts on the most "unpopular" numbers. I won a little, lost a little, leaving me a few dollars ahead, literally. Like $4. By this time, I just started university. After making friends with a few upper-year classmates, they eventually learned of my big secret project. One of them was kind enough to break the news to me: I would learn that my theory was utterly crap, as soon as I took my first stats course. I verified the bad news in the library, myself. Over a year of hard work, completely wasted. My naive pet theory debunked. And worst of all, I had learned Pascal. Doh!
I knew the analysis was garbage when I saw that the graphs were continuous. The frequency counts are not meaningful for ball number 32.51792 and yet, if you look at any of the graphs, there is frequency count for it.
It makes the whole thing look a bit like a junior-high science project.
I did something like this against the Florida Lottery.
:)
:) If you win, kick a little back to me.
It was interesting. I had tried a long time ago, when my database and programming skills weren't quite all that great (like, quite a while ago). It was very klunky, but I was able to establish slightly better odds.
This last time around, with a longer set of numbers, I gave it another shot. I downloaded the lottery history, which ran from May 1998 to Feb 2007 (which is when I stopped playing with it). I end up with a 2% variance, from over 8000 draws. I also let it draw upon the recent history, so if some factor changes with the machines and/or balls, that would be compensated for.
I dumped all the numbers into a database, and then started analyzing them. Once I was satisfied with my method, I put together a web interface so I could set a few variables, and let it run through history, starting on the first pull.
When we got pretty deep into it, things got interesting. Using variations on all time and recent ball history, I worked it through to win with all 6 balls twice a year, and a few 4 and 5 balls wins, by spending $100k per lottery drawing. So, for an investment of $5,200,000 every year, you could walk away with quite a few more millions.
Needless to say, I couldn't refine it any more (more like I didn't bother), and when I mentioned it to a few friends, we couldn't rationalize finding $100k at a shot to potentially blow on a losing venture, even if it would win twice a year. 1:26 or even 1:52 is a hell of a lot better than 1:16,529,385,600
Anyone really interested in seeing my work can contact me via my site (which is linked from my profile here). Maybe you can increase your odds.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
In other news 1,000,000 Slashdot readers went on a rampage after hitting the megamillions jackpot & only winning $370.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
1. They won't allow someone to plop down $175 million and just buy all the numbers. The buyer would have to fill out betting slips individually. One could hire people to do it, but that would eat into the profits.
:)
2. Jackpots are always quoted as $370 million or whatever, but what that really means is $18.5 million per year for 20 years (or possibly $12.333... million per year for 30 years). If you want the lump sum (which the multi-state lotteries apparently have to offer by federal law; single-state lotteries don't have to, and I know Massachusetts doesn't for their own Megabucks game), it's maybe a bit more than half of the quoted jackpot (the exact amount depends on what the annuity they have to buy to fund the jackpot will cost).
3. There's always the possibility that one or more other bettors will hit the winning combo along with you, cutting your proceeds in half or worse, destroying your profits.
So, yeah, I think you're missing something here!
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
There is always the possibility that the stock is flat. If up or down were the only two possibilities, we'd all be zillionaires from option trading by now :-)
Start with 2**20, 1 million, and go down to the last 1024.
You need to stop being an anal retentive pessimist looking at the clouds and start being an optimist looking for the silver linings.
Infuriate left and right
"Most Everyone": Tsk.
I did not read the article, & neither did I purchase any lottery. But look, I won $370Million in Nigerian lottery. There is a rider though - I need to transfer Mr.Mbwamba $300 to do an online transfer. I will not give his email Id for my security.
Laugh. Its a joke.
Dilbert cartoon:
Tech Guy looking at machine: This is our new product - a Random machine generator
Random Machine Printout: 8, 8, 8, 8, 8,.....
Dilbert: Um, are you sure it's working correctly?
Tech Guy: That's the problem with random, you can never be sure.
Err no, I didn't read the article!
BUT If it didn't cover it, it should.
I've always figured predicting the lottery is extremely unlikely but mildly possible, when analysing historical numbers, in my opinion the second the machine is replaced for a newer model you need to scrap your numbers.
We change ours here in Australia on the main lotto, every 5 years or so (very rough guess)
If you follow the patterns of only the latest machine, well you might double your chances! - still incredibly unlikely but possible.
(I may be repeating someone else, but I do not have the time to read through all the comments...)
There is really not enough historical draw data to analyze whether there are any statistical anomalies in this particular lottery or not. So while analyzing the draw data might be fun, it is completely useless and has no practical bearing.
As I understand, the lottery in question has two draws per week. That's about 104 draws per year. And the author states that the lottery has been running since 1995, that is for about 12 years. About 12 years * about 104 draws/year = about 1248 draws. And as the author himself states, the odds of winning the jackpot is 1 in 175,711,536 which means that there are 175,711,536 different draw outcomes. And only about 1248 of those have been drawn already. That is, of the total "outcome space" only a miniature fraction of 1248 / 175,711,536 = 7,1026e-6 has already occurred. Judging from this fraction only, we cannot say whether the numbers are biased or not, we need more data. And if the data might seem biased now, I am quite sure that the numbers will even out given enough time... for all the draw outcomes to have a chance of occurring at least once, we will need to wait for roughly 140,000 years.
Lisa: Oh, the Broncos won?
Homer: Why didn't I bet on them like Professor Pigskin told me to?
Lisa: Who's Professor Pigskin?
Homer: (Holding Professor Pignskin pamplet) He's a pig who can predict football winners in advance!
Lisa: How is that possible?
Homer: Because he's got something no gambler's ever had: a system! I've gotten the pamphlet four weeks in a row, and every time, the pick-of-the-week has been right on the money.
Lisa: Ah... I get it. Every week, they send out two pamphlets, half picking one team and half picking the other. Eventually, there's a small group of people who only receive the correct predictions and think Professor Pigskin is always right. That's when they ask for your money.
Homer: I have money!
Lisa: Dad, it's a scam!
Homer: A scam?! Not according to Eddie F. From Tucson, or Football Millionaire in Beloit, Michigan.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
The money the government collects from lotteries doesn't vanish into thin air. It is a very important source of revenue for the state. In most cases I know of in the US the money from the state lotto is directed either in whole or in part directly into the public school system.
If everyone stopped buying lotto tickets and started sponsoring kids in Africa instead then the state would not be able to find your schools, and in a couple of decades you'd have to be sponsoring "3rd world kids" in the US.
Back in 2000-2003, I would routinely enter in the numbers for the MegaMillions and run them to see which numbers came up more often. That's essentially the same thing he's doing here. I stopped because it really seemed pointless. Later, the MegaMillions *released* the numbers, which means they encourage this sort of activity.
So, I pondered what this could mean. I assumed that certain numbers came up more frequently because some balls had trivial differences in weight which resulted in some balls being favored. When they released the numbers, I realized they could afford to change the balls out every time. Think about how much a few score ping-pong balls cost in light of how much the corporation that manages MegaMillions rakes in.
This means that the numbers aren't really the same every time. They weight of the "1" ball changes each time, which means that one time it's 1.0001 and the next time it's 1.0120.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
and you'll win more. Probably not enough to make a profit though.
Almost everyone knows not to bet 1,2,3,4,5,6 because there are a few hundred morons who already pick this sequence and if it wins the jackpot will be split between them.
Less obvious is that some people pick numbers based on dates, or phone number digits, or the numbers sports players wear. These are biased towards small values, so you should do the opposite and prefer big numbers, to reduce the chance of a split jackpot.
Or course, some lotteries don't let you choose numbers, in which case all you can do it wait for roll-overs to boost the prize fund.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I also perform these analysis (well, a little less elaborate) on the outcomings of the Dutch "Staatsloterij". One can find these here (updated every month).
www.vanheusden.com - home of Multitail, HTTPing, CoffeeSaint, EntropyBroker, rsstail, bsod, listener, nagcon, nagi
A conversation in High School:
GF: "Honey, what do I mean to you?"
ME: "Babe, to me you are like a lottery ticket, you could be worth millions but you're usually only worth a buck...."
She didn't talk to me for a week....
-AL
TIME is the Aether...
Looks like it is time for a BadStatistics web site to go up there with BadAstronomy.
The original article says this:
The first version of the BigGame is the only drawing with a descending trend line that when combined with the deviations identify the distribution as slightly abnormalbut it later explains:
As such, positional analysis focused on how the numbers are stratified within their given positionThe specific problem is that there are 52 independant entities bouncing around in that chamber that happen to have numeric labels on them. The author sorts the data based on those labels, and runs a trend analysis that relies heavily on the sort order, in order to draw a conclusion that "the trend" is "abnormal" or "normal".
That effectively reduces a n^52 polynomial down to a n^1 polynomial. I would accept a conclusion based on 170 data points (1 lotto drawing is one data point) for a n^1 polynomial ... but for a n^52? Not a chance. Give me a few billion data points for that polynomial, or proof that reducing the system down to that sort order is, in fact, valid.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
The lottery is a tax for poor people who are bad at math.
Random things.. happen.
Normally I would agree... But given the history of Las Vegas:
Tommy! Guewss what?
It -
ain't -
your -
luckwy -
day.
Let's take a ride.
Hi,
you are lucking a the wrong distribution. The skew of the numbers in the lottery compared to equal distribution is negible low, well within expected limits I say.
On the other hand the distribution of numbers guessed by people is far from an equal distribution. So while all outcomes are equaly likely the expected win is not the same for every outcome. Many people pick for example 1,2,3,4,5,6 so the win, if that combination does come up, is only a fraction of the jackpot. Scientific america had an article about the distribution of peoples guesses a few years back and there where some definite patterns there.
MfG
Goswin