Rusalka’s post about ticket buying and winning odds reminded me of an idea I had years back about lotto games. For your perusal: (Be kind this is my first thread post. =-) )
When rolling 3 six sided dice (3d6 for you RPGers out there) the probability that the total will be 3 or 18 is unlikely where as the total being around 10 is more likley as defined by the bell curve probabilty…
http://ptgptb.org/0009/simon.html (1/3 the way down for the diagrams, forgive / ignore the heavy discussion on games)
Apply this to a lottery system where in this case the dice are 42 sided and the number of rolls are 6. With the exception that you can’t roll the same number twice. (i.e. Power Ball) Now is there not a magic total that should show up more often? such as is illustrated by the bell curve? This is in some small way the game of craps works. If you selected numbers that added up to that magic number would you not increase your odds of wining?
Looking on the Kentucky Loto page (www.kylotto.com) the winning numbers average over the past 180 days (48 games) to 149.49. Based on rough mathmatics (forgive the lack of accuracy here) I think the number is around 120. The actual mathmatical caculation of the peak of the bell curve is more complicated due to the changed probabilty of each successive draw. (ball one odds are 1 in 42, ball 2 are 1 in 41 and so on.) and the large range of numbers possible.
In Power Ball and other games like this overall odds of winning are 1 in 3,776,965,920 Using these ideas I think the following are safe assumptions:
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picking the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and conversly 42, 41, 40, 39, 38, 37 have the above mentioned odds of winning
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picking numbers that add up to the “magic” number would increase the odds but by how much???
This system is free for your use without charge. However when you win please share with me! =-)