Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
No, not just statistical, but from life.
I have participated in both lotteries (and have won up to $1000 in them, and made more than I ever spent).
I have also participated in raffles - and won similar payouts.
As to the lifestyle impact, it is a provable truism that most maximum payout winners do not actually improve their lives.
It's like when I got an inheritance - the best thing you can do with that is max out your retirement funds and pay off debt, and then put much of the rest in paying down your mortgage. Most people blow it, though.
The difference between being rich and poor is usually how much you save and what you buy. Lottery tickets can be a fun diversion, cheaper than getting drunk, but they are not a wise use of cash.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
e.g. One dollar a week == no lifestyle impact; $370MM payout == off the charts lifestyle impact. Also, for 1 dollar a week you are buying a mild emotional high when checking the numbers and a mild emotional low when you find out that math pwned you again.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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?
Of course you can't conclude much from this analysis. In any random distribution you're going to see random statistical fluctuations causing some clustering. Some numbers will get picked more than you'd predict by chance, just by chance. And necessarily some numbers will be picked less often than you'd predict by chance. The upside of this is that you can predict the extent of this clustering and compare that to the actual data to see if it's rigged.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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
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
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...
You're already losing by buying the ticket.
No, not really. Your state is getting paid revenue (supposedly for education around here - not always).
Which is just the excuse they used to get it through.
But money is the ultimate fungible commodity. (That's its whole purpose, after all.) Any amount that the lottery puts into the schools the state government can neglect to put in when they set the next budget. So the effect is that the lottery money goes to the pet projects of the legislature (in a roundabout-on-paper fashion).
Also, you are getting a chance to win the Jackpot...
Yep.
For the smaller ones the payoff is small enough to not matter. Further, the odds are short enough and the players play often enough that the payoff quickly approaches the expectation - usually $0.50 for every $1.00 played. (They take your money and give half of it back in chunks.)
For the big jackpots the odds are typically in the ballpark of being hit by lightning 10 times. And while the payoff typically has a "half the pot" number, it's paid out over a long enough period that you're just getting the INTEREST on the payoff, while the state keeps the principal, making the effective value much lower. (In some cases you have the option to select getting a much lower payout right away, which proves the point...) And then the federal government takes a cut. So the expectation is 'WAY less than $.50 out for every $1.00 in.
Lotteries are a voluntary tax on innumeracy (mathematical illiteracy).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Exactly, a couple years back at vegas, the roulette wheel spun black 13 times in a row.
Thats like 1/.48^13th.
Random things.. happen.
Randomly- some poor investing sod out there has made every choice correctly and been hammered by random market events.
Likewise- some lucky fool (that thinks he is brilliant) has picked google or tasr or crox on some non-logical basis and won big.
That's why you use Mutual Funds and ETF's. You get average performance. You lose the home runs, but you also lose the strike-outs.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Thats like 1/48^13.
Random things.. happen.
And guess what? Last night in Vegas, the roulette wheel spun this:
Red, Black, Black, Red, Black, Red, Red, Black, Red, Red, Red, Black, Red.
That's like 1/.48^13th.
A lot of people would be better off in understanding "randomness" if they would just realize that these two situations have exactly the same probability. Humans just assign more "meaning" to certain sequences than others.