Several years ago I was in traffic school (for a moving violation I allegedly committed the morning I was going to participate, in a funeral, as a pallbearer! :(); the instructor said, that, at least in California, the state lottery is more complex and better controlled than people would realize: There is a cabal of lottery officials in the state capital who decide where the winner will be–they may, in CA, decide that the winner will be in Los Angeles…or San Francisco…or Sacramento…or Redding…or Bishop in Inyo County…
If such a thing were widely known–or is it just another urban legend–? Of course, lottery participation would decrease to zero–and so would the jackpots!!
Are you talking about the Super Lotto or the Scratchers?
The lottery numbers are chosen randomly. There’s no reason to do otherwise.
Super Lotto, Louie. Though I can imagine that someone in Sacramento knows which shipment of Scratcher tickets has winners in it and decisions are made about what part of the state to send them to…
Certain numbers show up more than others. Odd. Some people actually keep track of them & it like changes the probability theory.
7 12 18 24 26 32 36 47 50 are usually the numbers I see all the time. They don’t appear all at once, unfortunately.
They say the odds are better of getting struck by lightning than winning the lottery…
It’s just too bad you can’t win the lottery by standing in the middle of a field with a golf club.
Certain numbers show up more than others because it’s almost guaranteed that some numbers will. It doesn’t change the probability at all.
For example, if you flip a coin 100 times, you should see 50 heads and 50 tails on average. But the chance is very, very low that you will see EXACTLY 50 heads. It’ll be something like 47/53, 42/58, etc.
Likewise, if I draw a number from 1 to 49 and repeat this 49 times, the probability that I will draw every number exactly once is exceedingly small. So some numbers will get drawn more than others.
The draws are still random, and looking at the historical results of such draws doesn’t help you predict the future one bit.
I just noticed my last comment was a pun (not winning the lottery, unfortunately as in no fortune.)
Sorry, I’m just really bored today.
Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking.
Fun with HTML (tutoral)
Give someone an F.U.
4, 10, 16, 32, 36 and 49 were Wednesday’s numbers. I got 2 out of 6. 
I seriously doubt that it is rigged.
Jeffery
Louie–are you in California?
Yes, dougie, I live in CA, and yes I know that you can only pick 6 numbers, not 9 like I did. I was just trying to prove that those certain numbers appear at least 3 times a month.
Why would the lottery people give a rat’s ass where the winning ticket went? What could they possibly have to gain by having the winner be in a specific town?
They might want to make it seem more random.
For instance, a lot of people in Kentucky may be turned off from buying tickets because “it’s always somebody in Louisville who wins.” It may be true that 1/3 of the winners were from Louisville, which seems disproportionate to someone in Hazard. It isn’t, though, because about 1/3 of the people in Kentucky live in metro Louisville.
Or it could be that one particular town is crazy about the lottery, and a disproportionate number of tickets is sold there. Again, they wouldn’t want to make it look like all the winners were coming from there, so they might try to spread it out a little.
Yes, this would lower the odds for the people those areas, but it’s still unlikely they’d catch on. I mean, if they cared about the odds, they wouldn’t be playing the lottery.
I’m not saying that the state does this–in fact, I’m fairly certain they don’t. I’m just proposing an answer to the above question about what they might have to gain.
Dr. J
If they’d even want to, by what mechanism would they use to achieve it? How dey gonna do it, in other words?
They’d have to pick the winner beforehand, somehow get those machines to pop the correct balls through the tube. Even if they weighted the ball in the drum (or lightened the ball in the “air-popper”) that would only weight the probability just slightly.
It appears to be just a little more work than it would be worth.
To lying, cheating, stealing, and drinking.
Always lie to save a friend, cheat death,
steal your love’s heart, and drink with good friends.
—*Madison Michele
*
I see your point.