Lottery Numbers - 1,2,3,4,5,6

gatzi

gatzi

gatzi

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19 Mar 2010
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Perth, Australia
Brought on by a drunken chat at the weekend

My wife asks what is the chance of her winning the lottery with her 1 line of numbers. I reply 1 in 14 million (which I presume is correct?)

Anyway, I then tell her she has just as much chance of winning with the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 (Ala Rab C) which puts it into perspective.

Is this correct and if so, wouldn’t you love to test this? Run the lottery 14million + times and see how long it takes for this to happen

That was my plan after a few beers anyway.

Would be epic, who is willing to test this for me?
 
Well it could take very much longer than 14 million tries. There is a 1 in 14 million chance (for example) every time you make a draw. It doesn't mean that after 14 million tries you will see your numbers come out.
 
Still not a good idea to play them for real as when you win you'll be sharing your prize with probably hundreds of other people who did the same thing
 
Derren Brown beat you to it to some extent.

Can't remember the name of it but it was basically playing odds enough times makes the seemingly impossible actually quite possible. E.g. flipping a coin and getting 10 heads in a row.
 
Although odds of winning with any set of 6 numbers are the same, sets of numbers that might be chosen by disproportionately large numbers of people (such as 1,2,3,4,5,6) should be avoided as the prize will be split equally among all winners.
 
If I ever have a ridiculous amount of money to waste (hundreds of millions) I will place 14 million lines to include every combination, just to say I won the lottery. Hell if it's a rollover I may even make some profit!
 
Looking through facts/figures of Lotto it appears some 6,000 people on average use this combination of numbers each week. :confused:

[Edit] 1 2 3 4 5 6
 
Pretty simple php script

Shuffle the numbers 1 - 49, take the last 6. Sort. Loop it and check against your numbers sorted. Take an average out of 100 correct numbers. Probably overall it'll run the script ~ 1,400,000,000 times.

I'd like to add, I often think about 1-6 in consequtive order. Then I choose against because it minimises my potential winnings.. There will always be more than 1 person out there (as a joke or not) who's bought 1-6 too. Therefore splitting the jackpot multiple ways. hence I go for numbers I feel people are unlikely to pick. Perhaps 30-36.

What do you think?
 
jonislost said:
If I ever have a ridiculous amount of money to waste (hundreds of millions) I will place 14 million lines to include every combination, just to say I won the lottery. Hell if it's a rollover I may even make some profit!
Click to expand...

Unless someone else wins as well, and you have to split it, so you will make a loss if you get less then 14 mill :D
 
jonislost said:
If I ever have a ridiculous amount of money to waste (hundreds of millions) I will place 14 million lines to include every combination, just to say I won the lottery. Hell if it's a rollover I may even make some profit!
Click to expand...

I just hope I'm not in the queue behind you in the newsagents. ;)
 
That's what I do.. go in and say, do you have 14 million lottery tickets available?

They say you mean lottery tickets?

And I win. .
 
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