NY Lottery picks 9-1-1 on Sept. 11 ... what are the odds?

Factual Questions
21

Actually, the numbers I’m using are with that already figured in. We’re talking about drawing the one day that is of the most interest on the day that it most matters. Those odds are 500.25012 to one against. Coming up with just any old date is tremendously more likely than that.

If we stick with the mdd format for the date, there are 274 draws that can be interpretted as a date. Thus the odds of drawing some date are 274 out of 1000, or roughly 3.65 to one against. If you allow mmd and dmm and ddm date formats it gets even better, but I haven’t finished those figures yet.

Mathematically competent dopers-- [sub][sup]Did I get it right this time?[/sup][/sub]

22

Looking back upon it now, the chance of the NY lottery picking 911 on Sept. 11 was exactly 1 (100%). Seriously, the chance of the lottery picking 911 was exactly the same as the lottery picking any other number on that day. Coindidence? Well, I can think of hunderds of events that could be coincidences but that don’t happen; the chance of one of these events happening once in a while is quite real. That does not make it less of a coincidence -depending on your definition- but to say that someone rigged the lottery doesn’t account for a strong sense of reality.

23

I think there’s a fallacy here that commonly leads to people viewing coincidences like this with skepticism, hence we have many people here believing the lottery must have been rigged (which I seriously doubt).

The fallacy is that, when people are confronted with a coincidence, people tend to view that single incident in isolation, forgetting that, with the billions of events occuring throughout the world every single day, coincidences are actually to be commonly expected.

When things like this happen, people commonly ask, “What are the chances of that happening?” I don’t really think it’s an appropriate question, though. People would have been impressed if anything coincidental happened. What if the pick four came up as exactly the number of victims on 911? What if the lottery came up as the flight number of one of the planes? What if exactly 911 people won the lottery? What if the Dow went up or down 9.11 points on that day? These are just a few examples of things that would have been equally surprising on that day; so when someone asks, “What are the chances of that happening?”, the first thing that occurs to me is, “Well, do you really mean the chances of that specific event happening, or are you really asking what the chance of any relevant coincidence happening?” I think the latter view is more appropriate, because if any other relevant coincidence occured, you can be sure people would still be asking, “What are the chances of that happening?”

History is literally full of incredible coincidences happening. When the Virginia pick 3 lottery started on 5/22 several years ago (I believe, I’m going from memory here), the very next days numbers were 5-2-2. I’m quite sure that wasn’t rigged–the VA lottery lost quite a bit of money that day.

One particular example of a great coincidence was at a Nebraska church many years ago. Fifteen people were supposed to show up for choir practice that evening. Some had car trouble, some were sick, or maybe caring for sick family members, but, for whatever reason, every single one of the fifteen missed practice that night. A damn good thing, too, since the church blew up during (what would have been) the choir practice.

So you see, it’s not surprising at all that major coincidences happen all the time; when viewed in isolation, a coincidence can be pretty damn unbelievable, but with all the activity in the world, such things are to be expected. What would be surprising is if coincidences never happened.

24

This lottery business is becoming curiouser and curiouser.

I went to the NY lottery website and discovered that the midday winning number on September 11 was 833!

That’s right, 833 followed by 911. The odds of that happening, in that particular order, are ONE in a MILLION.

Not only that, but I took a look at the results for the day before and after. Unbelieveably, the same one in a million.

25

I saw the video of the nighttime drawing on The Smoking Gun site. It must have been difficult for Yolanda Vega to keep her composure.

“It’s Wednesday, September 11, 2002. I’m Yo-lan-da Vega!..The first ball up…is 9. The next ball up…is 1. And the last ball up…is 1. Making tonight’s winning number 911.”

Probably very hard to keep a straight face for that.

But apparently, this once occured somewhere in America:

"Tonight’s winning number is 0666. We now return to The Ten Commandments.

26

I don’t know if it’s true, but that is funny as hell.

The thing is, if you only accept the following as applicable days:

  1. Only drawings on days named by the US government
  2. Only drawings that take place exactly one year to the day after the event that inspired said naming

Then the odds may still be 1 in 2000 (or 500 or 100 - we seem to be getting some different answers) on any given day, however, if such a day exists only once (on average) a decade, then it takes 2000 decades (or 500 or 100), for the cycle to play out. On the indivivdual days, sure the odds stay the same, but supposedly, as the dropping balls in the Boston Museum of Science which always land in a bell type of curve illustrate, if you play these out over 2000 iterations you should get something like this occuring once in 20,000 years. Not impossible, but impressive when you consider how long lotteries have been around. Either way, it should be a long time before such a thing happens again.

It is not impossible to rig the lottery. Doesn’t mean it happened, but it looks mighty odd to me. I am hesitant to dismiss fraud as a possibility, but will accept that it is far from a surety.

DaLovin’ Dj

27

I find it facscinating that people would much rather believe in conspiracy or fraud than that a not-very-unlikely coincidence happened. It seems we would rather believe in anything rather than chance.

28

First of all, why would someone rig the lottery to pay out on the MOST PURCHASED number for that day’s drawing? They’d be costing the lottery money (if it’s not paramutal), or themselves money (if it is paramutual, and they were hoping to win). Also, the fact that it came up like this is almost certain to lead to a public outcry about fraud, leading to at least a cursory investigation, which could get them caught. If you were going to fix it, you would a) pick a meaningless number, b) not do it on the most important day of the year, c) not do it on the lottery game where the max payout is ~$250, and d) hi, opal!

Second of all, you’re assuming that there was only one “coincidental” possibility. It could have also come out 093, 930, 011, 110, 077, 770, or whatever the other flight number was. Plus, there was another lottery drawing that day. The odds of that happening would have been in the neighborhood of 2/125 (not QUITE that, but close enough). That’s not unlikely at all. It’s not an every day occurance, but the odds are pretty decent.

Fraud just doesn’t make sense, and the odds of a significant number coming up are significanly less than you would initially assume.

(if you throw in 125, 152, 215, 251, 512, and 521, the numbers of the buildings that collapsed, then the odds are even higher that they would come up. And throwing in other states, it’s almost a certainty that some state, somewhere, would pick one of those combos. Let it one of those count on a pick 4 game, and I’d almost guarantee that another of those numbers came up in some state’s pick 3 or 4 games yesterday, too.

29

Don’t we have to factor in the odds of using a calendar whereby the day we call 9-11-02 happened to be what we call the one-year anniversary of 9-11-01?

30

First, I’m going to correct my second error (that I know about) in this two-thread topic. 1.999/1000 does not mean 500.25012 to one against. It means, I think, 499.25012 to one against. It’s not much of a difference but I mean to get my method ironed out if it kills me.

dj, when we talk about the odds for drawing our number on a certain day, we mean not just the day of the year, but that one day out of all the ages of time. And we can specify any number and any day. The odds would be exactly the same if we chose a day 666 days after the event we wish to commemorate, or one day after, or ten years after. But let’s say we choose the one-year anniversary.

As for picking only days named by the US government, and only the one-year anniversary, we’ve done that. We narrowed it down further than that, even. We narrowed it down to only ONE possible choice. And there was only one shot at it. (Okay, two shots. Two drawings on the same day.) It will never “cycle” around again. And the odds were… 1.999 out of a thousand.

I should stress that it was never at all likely that 9-1-1 would be drawn in the NY lottery on the first anniversary of the attacks. On the contrary, it was very unlikely. To the tune of about 500 to one against. The point here is that this is not incredible.

Maybe you’re still thinking, “But why THIS number? THIS year?” The answer is that it’s not less likely than any other specific choice, it’s just that it’s much more likely to get your attention. The number 9-1-1 comes up a lot in pick-three games. About one time out of a thousand. Most of those times you don’t notice. Other coincidences happen in drawings all the time. Most of those you don’t notice. The chances of some striking coincidence happening in the lottery one of these days: near certain. The chance of this particular very interesting coincidence on this day in this game: 1.999 out of a thousand.

The drawings for the last year: New York Lottery

31

First, there are more than the 10 first months to express dates. November 7th can be expressed as 117. All calender days except for 11/11-30 and 12/11-31 fit in three digits.

Second, there are more going on in the world that might product an interesting coincidence than the one lotterly drawing. If the Washington DC lottery was 911, that would be weird. If anyone’s lottery was 911, it would be weird. If the Redskins lost to the Giants or Bills that week 11-9, it would be weird. If any big clock in in New York or Washington broke, and was showing a time of 9:11 (am or pm) it would be weird. If the lottery had come up 119, it would be worth of notice. If the high temperature for the day was 91.1 degrees, or 9.11" of rain fell. Any of these would apply if they made the flight number of any of the doomed flights. Or the time of day of any of the impacts (8:36? I forget). And so on and so forth. The odds were 1 in 1000 of that particular number coming up in that particular lottery on that particular day. But they were much higher for something that was numerical coincidental to occur.

32

On the day last November that AA flight 587 crashed, the New Jersey lottery’s pick-3 winning number was 587. The linked article also contains this statement: “In another coincidence, the Pick 3 number chosen for the lottery’s new midday drawing, which debuted Monday, was a variation on the flight number, 578.” So if we don’t get a match in New York, we look at other states, and we allow permutations of the flight number to count as interesting coincidences.

From HowStuffWorks:

33

It’s interesting to see how they pick the balls, but still, a conspiracy is not impossible. “How many people would have to be in on it?” is the question, not “Could it be done?”

But if it had happened on just ANY day, then you could count all the drawings in the past and the future. You would expect 9-1-1 to come up once in every 1000 drawings. If there is only 1 drawing a decade that qualifies, then we should see one historically signifigant date drawn (on the one year anniversary of that date) every 1000 decades.

Hell, it’s even longer if you factor in it actually happening in the state where the events that made the date historically signifigant occur. How often is there a lotto drawing that can be written as a date, that takes place one year after an event that led the US government to name that day, and takes place in the state where the event occured? Whatever your answer is to how often such a day occurs, now you expect the following:

Of every 2000 of those days which qualify, 1 should match.

Now, I’m not sure, but I imagine such a day has not occurred very often. I’m pretty sure such days will be far and few between. It’ll take thousands of years for 2000 such days to occur. The odds are way long, kids.

DaLovin’ Dj

34

This line of discussion puts me in mind of a bridge player who loos as his hand and says “Well, I got the King and Queen of spades, and the Jack of hearts, and the Ace-Queen-ten-nine of diamonds, etc. and the odds of me drawing this exact hand are about one in 300 million, which is impossible, so therefore the deal was rigged.”

35

Nope. We’ve already got that. Suppose that, on Sept. 10 2002, someone had said “You know, it would be really creepy if the number 911 came up in tomorrow’s New York lotto drawing. What are the chances of that?”, then the answer would be approximately 1 in 500.

OK, so 1 in 500 is a bit surprising, but I’ve seen 1 in 500 chances go through before.

Now, let’s consider more numbers. It would have been about equally creepy for DC, Virginia, or Pennsylvania to have drawn those numbers. But they didn’t. Or for any of the states where the flights took off. But they didn’t. Or for the sports scores of teams in those places to have been 9 to 11. But they didn’t.

Suppose you look at all of the 1 in 500 chances which could have come through and been really creepy. I’ll bet you that of all of those possible events, one in five hundred of them happened. And for each of those few events which did occur, people went “Whoa, how’d that happen?”.

36

From the FWIW department:

Each sports home game at the high school in the small town here where I live in rural Colorado, the parents of the speech club hold a drawing to help raise money for the club. On the game day closest to 9-11, which was Thursday 9-12, the winning number was 911. I know this as a fact because I saw the child pull the number, and I announced the number.

TV

37

dalovindj is right, but Bryan Ekers is right too. The odds are way long, but the odds that matter are hardly odds at all, they’re a virtual certainty. 9-1-1 on 9/11 is the universe is playing a card trick on us, and it’s working because as humans we’re wired to fall for a sleight of hand concerning probability… to us, any astronomical event occuring feels just as breathtaking as a specific astronomical event occuring. The latter is in fact quite unusual, but the former is pretty much guaranteed to happen again and again during our lifetimes.

We could also think of it as an entangling of two lotteries… the New York lottery game that was played twice on 9/11 and had about a .4% chance of having 9-1-1 as a winning number, and the lifetime lottery of bizarre coincidences which is played every moment of every day by everyone and is utterly ignored until you win. Now, two factors in this latter lottery to consider when calculating odds:

A. We are living in an information-rich culture. Each new piece of information available to us multiplies the possibility of an astronomical coincidence occuring. And the harder you look for that astronomical coincidence, the more likely it is you will find it because you will expose yourself to many more pieces of information.

B. Mass media magnifies our natural instinct to focus on the amazing and forget about the mundane, further distorting our own natural inability to estimate probability in the lifetime lottery of bizarre coincidences. We don’t just get the chance to ponder our own astronomical experiences, we hear about anyone who has a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence and adopt it as our own.

Huh.

I’m basically restating what Chronos. cabbage and RickJay are saying to get it straight in my own mind. We’re tricking ourselves by starting with the concept of “coincidences that happen on 9/11 are meaningful” and working the probabilities from there. We actually started around birth with the concept that “extremely unlikely coincidences are meaningful” and all the discussion about 9-1-1 on 9/11 is the child produced from the union of this concept and the mathematical certainty that in our lifetimes one-in-a-million coincidences are certain to occur. It doesn’t matter who the father was… we are going to celebrate the baby!

Finally, assuming I’m full of it and it actually is a cosmic freaky thing… what does it mean? Assuming the lottery wasn’t rigged, what are the implications of the lotto number on 9/11 being 911? What is it evidence of?

-fh