Winning the lotto
- Thread starter lupi
- Start date
Auto-pick reduces your chances of winning the lottery. It was started in 1990s to get people to save time when buying lottery tickets. However, given that nothing can be truly random, mathematicians have cracked the auto-pick code and have deduced that at most you can get 5 numbers correctly in a drawing of 6 numbers or 6 correctly in a drawing of 7 numbers. You are better off picking your own numbers.
I'm not saying you're wrong but... that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that in a lottery draw there are some combinations of numbers which are impossible to come up?
Originally posted by: rikadik
I'm not saying you're wrong but... that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that in a lottery draw there are some combinations of numbers which are impossible to come up?
Exatly. Your picked numbers are just as likely to be the autopicks, and vise-versa. It's just a gamble.
Demon-Xanth
Lifer
- Feb 15, 2000
- 20,551
- 2
- 81
Whatever you do, don't pick the "Lost" numbers. Because if you win, you'll end up splitting it with 100,000 other people that played the same numbers and will get $20/yr for the next 20 years.
Originally posted by: LoKe
Originally posted by: rikadik
I'm not saying you're wrong but... that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that in a lottery draw there are some combinations of numbers which are impossible to come up?
Exatly. Your picked numbers are just as likely to be the autopicks, and vise-versa. It's just a gamble.
Hahaha. I was talking out of my ass. LoKe is spot on.
Assuming that the number picking process is fair (i.e. they don't tamper with the balls or whatnot) it shouldn't matter.
DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
(Hopefully you realize that hypn0tik is being sarcastic.)
However, having given this a good 30 seconds worth of thought, my intuition tells me that the auto-picked numbers show a greater variety of combinations, simply because a lot of people play numbers that have meaning to them. Due to no months having more than 31 days, I'd think that the self-picked numbers do not show true randomness; that is, numbers between 32 and whatever the highest number is occur with a slightly lower frequency than numbers below 32.
As such, the auto-picked numbers will probably be favored over the long run. Although, I'm not sure the sample size at the present time is large enough to evaluate this with any statistical certainty.
However, having given this a good 30 seconds worth of thought, my intuition tells me that the auto-picked numbers show a greater variety of combinations, simply because a lot of people play numbers that have meaning to them. Due to no months having more than 31 days, I'd think that the self-picked numbers do not show true randomness; that is, numbers between 32 and whatever the highest number is occur with a slightly lower frequency than numbers below 32.
As such, the auto-picked numbers will probably be favored over the long run. Although, I'm not sure the sample size at the present time is large enough to evaluate this with any statistical certainty.
pontifex
Lifer
- Dec 5, 2000
- 43,804
- 46
- 91
Originally posted by: LoKe
Originally posted by: rikadik
I'm not saying you're wrong but... that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that in a lottery draw there are some combinations of numbers which are impossible to come up?
Exatly. Your picked numbers are just as likely to be the autopicks, and vise-versa. It's just a gamble.
i think i asked this once before. it just seems like the numbers that come up as the winners are usually within a certain range and the numbers that come up for the auto pick are in a different range. i don't know anything about random numbers, odds, statistics or anything like that though.
Originally posted by: LoKe
Originally posted by: rikadik
I'm not saying you're wrong but... that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that in a lottery draw there are some combinations of numbers which are impossible to come up?
Exatly. Your picked numbers are just as likely to be the autopicks, and vise-versa. It's just a gamble.
That's what I thought. Plus, since you share the jackpot, auto-pick can be better as it is most likely more random than the way you pick your numbers yourself. Many people probably pick their numbers in the same way you do. Leaving them fairly spread out, moving from column to column.
So although your chances of winning are the same, you may end up sharing the jackpot with fewer people if you auto-pick. However that depends how random the auto-pick actually is.
um... "variety of combinations" doesn't matter in randomness.
the balls are just as likely to come up as 1-2-3-4 as they are 7-13-16-31
or did I misunderstand you?
Demon-Xanth
Lifer
- Feb 15, 2000
- 20,551
- 2
- 81
The Powerball drawing of the March 30, 2005 game produced an unprecedented 110 second-place winners, all of whom picked the first five numbers correctly, but not the Powerball number. The total came out to $19.4 million in unexpected payouts; 89 tickets won $100,000, and the other 21 tickets won $500,000 due to the Power Play multiplier option.
Powerball officials initially suspected fraud, but it turned out that all the winners received their numbers from fortune cookies made by Wonton Food Inc., a fortune cookie factory in Long Island City, Queens, New York. The factory had printed the five regular numbers (22, 28, 32, 33, and 39) on thousands of fortunes. The sixth number in the fortune, 40, did not match the Powerball number, 42. None of the employees of Wonton Food played those numbers.
Powerball officials initially suspected fraud, but it turned out that all the winners received their numbers from fortune cookies made by Wonton Food Inc., a fortune cookie factory in Long Island City, Queens, New York. The factory had printed the five regular numbers (22, 28, 32, 33, and 39) on thousands of fortunes. The sixth number in the fortune, 40, did not match the Powerball number, 42. None of the employees of Wonton Food played those numbers.
- Apr 8, 2001
- 32,539
- 260
- 126
I wasn't reffering to the mathematical statistics of the actual process, just wondering if anyone has done a study on pas winners to see what the breakdown was between each option.
As for Lost, I'd probably need to have watched more than 5 minutes of the show to pick those up
As for Lost, I'd probably need to have watched more than 5 minutes of the show to pick those up
tangent is correct. From a pure mathematics standpoint, every combination is equally likely to come up. Any "streaks" or "patterns" are purely the human mind trying to put a construct around the world (thanks psyc 101 for that bit of knowledge, i got into an argument over the prof on this much to my embarrassment).
Now if the lottery was influence by the past, then you could use Markov Models like the do in protein/gene prediction algorithms to find trends and predict with reason certainty what the next numbers would be. But since the tally is "reset" every time the numbers are drawn, it would lead to nothing useful. Trust me i have tried. I wrote a PERL script a bit back to predict Powerball numbers using the Markov technique; total failure.
Now if the lottery was influence by the past, then you could use Markov Models like the do in protein/gene prediction algorithms to find trends and predict with reason certainty what the next numbers would be. But since the tally is "reset" every time the numbers are drawn, it would lead to nothing useful. Trust me i have tried. I wrote a PERL script a bit back to predict Powerball numbers using the Markov technique; total failure.
DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
What I mean: Lets say there are 3 doors: red, blue, and puke green. And behind one of those doors, at random, is a prize. People were told to pick one of the three doors. And, a machine randomly picked one of the three doors. We can expect the machine to be almost truly random, while it's fair to believe that the people would avoid puke green in favor of the red or blue, lets say for the sake of argument, the people never pick puke green (this will make it easier to understand the math) And, we'll say there are an equal number of people choosing as the number of machine chosen numbers (again, for simplicity) Now, no matter which door someone (or the machine) picks, every door has a 1/3 chance of winning, every time.
The machine would tend to pick the puke green door and get it correct more often than the people would. But, the people would *still* win 1/3 of the time; they just wouldn't have a chance whenever the winner was puke green. That's the simple answer. But, it's wrong.
12 people, 12 machines... For the sake of simplicity, over the long run, we'll expect 1/2 the people to choose red each time, 1/2 to choose blue; machines over the long run would be 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. So, keeping things simple, we'll simply say that 6 people choose red each time and 6 choose blue. And the 12 machine chosen doors are split 4, 4, and 4.
Every time it's blue, we'll expect 6 people to win, every time it's red, 6 people, every time it's green, 0 people. Machines: 4, 4, and 4 win each time. It's a tie! Or is it? The number of people chosen winning doors is equal to the number of machine chosen winning doors. Hmmm, but isn't there a prize associated with winning?
Let's just do 3 drawings with each door winning once. $20 is won each time and divided among all the winners. Count them. There'd be 10 winners for red, 10 winners for blue, and only 4 winners for green.
When red wins, everyone gets $2 (the 6 people and the 4 machines.)
When blue wins, everyone gets $2 (the 6 people and the 4 machines.)
When green wins, there are only 4 who get any money: The 4 machines get $5 each.
Final tally:
people: $24
machines: $36
So, if there were equal numbers of people choosing based on what they like as people who use machines to choose, we can expect the frequency of winning to be about equal. However, over the long run, the people chosen numbers will tend to overlap (and have to share the prize) much more frequently than machine chosen random numbers. Anecdotal evidence: look how many people won when they all used the same number combination from a fortune cookie... Have you ever heard of more than 2 or 3 people all winning at the same time with quick picks?
edit: I should probably point out that in the case of the lottery, we would most likely see only a very small statistical deviation in the frequency of numbers chosen by people. As such, it would take a HUGE number of samples before there was statistical significance as to the machines being better than humans.
Also,
That's the exact same combination I use when teaching statistics to 9th graders to get them to understand why the lottery is for entertainment purposes, not a good get rich scheme. i.e. "if you think it's stupid to play that combination then you shouldn't be playing the lottery." (Of course, I don't attempt the argument that there's probably a lot of people out there playing 123456 just for shits and giggles, or in the case of one of the other teachers at my school, just for the 1 in millions chance of being able to show up to my door the next day and laugh at me)
So, what's the deal with the "Power Play multiplier option"? Sure would be nice to have that extra $400,000 if my fortune cookie numbers ever hit.
edit: just curious, of course - not expecting anything
In Powerball, the Powerplay option costs an extra $1 per set of numbers. During the drawing, they also pick a power play number that is between 2-5. Depending on what it hits, thats your multiplier. It could be 100,000x2 or 100,000x5. It does not apply if you win the jackpot though.
DrPizza
Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
No, it doesn't. However, pseudorandom number generators are generally designed so that each number in a range has an equal statistical probability of occuring.
Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Nice.
I think I'm going to play 1-2-3-4-5-6 and see what the people at the counter say.
Ive done that a few times...no luck though
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