This question has always perplexed me. Bear in mind that, mathmatically at least, I am an idiot.
Is playing the same number every week any less likely to win than playing a different number or a ‘quick pick’ number every week?
Assuming that all the balls have the same chance of being picked by the machine, there is no difference between any set of numbers.
The only advantage you gain by playing the same set week after week is that when they announce your numbers on the radio as the winning numbers, you will recognize them right away.
Good luck!!
Zev Steinhardt
The numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 have just as much likelihood of being picked as a random series like 2 5 18 30 41 44 or a personal series like 3 7 10 22 28 30.
Two problems with using 1 2 3 4 5 6:
- it’d be awfully suspicious. I’ve only seen 4 numbers in a row.
- if it weren’t suspect, you’d have to split the pot with quite a lot of people. I guess there’s lots of mathematicians out there that know 1 2 3 4 5 6 is just as likely as any other.
Along my last paragraph, my personal series 3 7 10 22 28 30 would have problems too. It’s just as likely to win. But since it’s based on dates, there’d be a greater likelihood that I’d have to share the prize. So pick numbers above 32 to lessen the sharing factor.
Thanks guys. I’ll keep playing the numbers of my favorite ball players.
Cecil sort of dealt with this issue:
How can I pick the winning number in the lottery?
URL: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_119.html
Good luck playing your numbers.
I hope your favourite ballplayers aren’t Ozzie Smith, Paul Molitor, Mike Schmidt, Carlos Delgado, Dave Stieb, and PAt Hentgen.
slight hijack, but an interesting tidbit.
About three years ago, the local pick 3 winning numbers in Wisconsin for October 31st were 6-6-6. Eerie.
Here’s another instance of funny numbers coming up in a lottery. Several years ago the Virginia pick 3 lottery began on 5/22. The second drawing they had (on 5/23) the numbers 5-2-2 came up. A bunch of people won, the lottery actually lost money on that day.
There’s a 1 in 1000 chance for any given number on any given day, so on average, you’ll expect to see 666 come up in any given lottery about once every three years. Coming up on Halloween might be considered a bit spooky, true, and if we require that, then the expectation is for it to come up once every thousand years. However, if you then consider that there’s fifty states, and I think all of them have a daily 3-digit lottery, we’re down to an expectation that once every twenty years or so, some state’s lottery somewhere will come up 666 on Halloween. We can even push the odds higher than that, though. Sure, Halloween is a significant day for it to be 666, but most people would consider it just as significant or more so for that number to come up on Friday the 13th. There’s an average of about two Fridays the 13th per year, so now we have three chances to win, so to speak, and the expectation is that about once every seven years, one of the state lotteries will come up 666 on an eerie day.
As an occasional lottery player, my attitude toward number picking is based on psychology rather than probability. If one has a regular set of numbers and forgets to play those numbers, one faces the devastating (and really, really, really …small)chance that those numbers will be chosen on that day. As the chance is so small, ones risk does not actually lie in missing those numbers, but in the development of an obsession with always playing those numbers so that one will not miss them. Like many people, I like to play when the numbers are really big, but I always play quick picks, lest I decline into monomania. (As opposed to momomania - an obsession with Japanese peaches)
/hijack
I’d like to thank all the new mexico residents who are playing the lottery – keep playing, I’m not through college!
/hijack off
Ignatz, I agree completely. And the favorite ball player thing is probably also a good bet to share the jackpot, unless you are very far away from your favorite ball club (like me, for example). (Although any lotto bet is a very bad one to begin with, of course.)
Enderw23:
Also, in 1994 or 1995, the day Michael Jordan announced he would return to the Bulls, were the numbers on the Illinois Pick 4, 2-3-4-5, 23 for MJ’s number, 45 for the number he used in baseball.
Another advantage of picking the same numbers every time is that you will never have to be in the situation of “kicking yourself” should “your” numbers ever come up without your having played them that day. The problem with this is that once you start playing, you have to keep it up until you die, lest your numbers come out the day after you quit playing.
I have the same theory on calling a coin toss. Pick one call and stay with it until you die. Always call heads. Or, always call tails. Of course, you still only be right half the time, but you’ll never have to agonize about which to call.
Chris Rock had it right when he called the lottery a “stupid tax” (i.e., a tax on stupidity). You’d have to be a fool to waste your money week in, week out.
I, of course, never rise above such stupidity if the stakes are high enough, as this stack of losing Powerball tickets will attest.
Probably real mathematicians consider this beneath themselves. But what I’d like to know is this: Is 1-2-3-4-5-6- or 7-14-21-28-35-42 has exactly the same chance of winning as any six “random” numbers? Because the above sets do not appear random to me, they are in some order! In other words, the probability that any six balls could be pulled out in any combination seems higher to me than the probability that a some relationship will exist in addition.
Or am I even below the admittedly idiot OP?
The lottery is very profitable for the government. That means you mostly loose. However, if you play, keep in mind that just getting picked is only part of the problem.
Ping-Pong balls operate randomly, unless rigged by dishonest intent. Humans, however, do not operate randomly. There is a non-random incidence, among numbers chosen by contestants greatly favoring numbers less than thirty-two. Even among those, numbers less than thirteen occur disproportionately more than random. These numbers are not less likely, or more likely to come up, but winners where those numbers do show up are more likely to share their winning jackpots.
When the payoff is higher than the odds, I play for the daydreams. I pay a buck, and daydream of great wealth for a few days. (I liked it a lot better when it was only once a week, my buck bought me a whole week of daydreams!) When I do, I play an obscure set of mathematically significant numbers. Not because they are better numbers, but because they are only significant to mathematicians and mathematicians don’t play the lottery.
Tris
They’re equally likely.
The series 7-14-21-28-35-42 isn’t a pattern at all. The fact that six randomly selected balls happened to have those six numbers painted on them isn’t any more or less likely than, say, 3-8-19-21-40-45.
I know it seems strange, but look at it this way; a pattern of numbers being spaced out 7 across like that IS much less likely than, say, six unrelated numbers. But that’s only because there are only a few patterns that follow an X-X+7 pattern, whereas in a 6/49 lottery there are about 13,000,000 combinations that don’t fit ANY pattern at all.
If anyone wants to know, the odds of hitting a 6/49 lottery is 1 in 13,983,816, assuming six randomly chosen and NON-REPEATING numbers (e.g. you can’t have 4-5-11-11-11-38.)
If you play 10 different numbers per draw your odds are 1 in 1,398,382 of winning. I don’t know about other places, but they have two draws a week here, so my odds of hitting in in a given year are roughly 1 in 13,446 every year if I play $10 per draw, two draws a week, which doesn’t seem that bad. Of course, then I’m out $1000 a year, but I make plenty money to share in a little fantasy. 
Yes.
I’m not sure if I follow your question, but I believe it’s asking whether “7-14-21-28-35-42” is truly random because it’s in order. The fact is that lotteries put the numbers in order after they pick them. 7-14-21-28-35-42 is the same as 42-35-28-21-14-7 and both are the same as any combination of numbers that have those six in them. In fact, because of that, our chances of winning increase significantly.
Imagine that you had to pick all 6 numbers in the correct order out of 60 numbers. Your chances of picking the first one is 1/60. The chances of picking the second number is 1/59, and so on. Your chances of picking all of them correctly in the right order are 1/601/591/581/571/56*1/55 = 1/36045979200
1 out of 36 BILLION times you’d win. It would take decades of no one winning for the prize to get high enough to equal the odds, making it worth playing.
But, every number combination has 720 different variations to it (65432*1 or 6!). Now the odds are 1 out of 50,063,860. Still astronomically high, but at least the prize has a shot of getting there.
Now, the powerball is special in that it has one particular number that MUST be correct, in the correct place to win.
They play with 49 white balls and one pick of the powerball from 42. Your odds of winning are:
5/494/483/472/461/45*1/42 = 80,089,128.
This means that when that, other than taxes being taken out (which is a HUGE consideration), you can only have a positive expectation on the Powerball when the jackpot is above $80 million.
Probably more infomation than you asked for, but I just scooted into random mathematician mode for a second.