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

Raymond Lin · 28 Sep 2010 at 19:27

Strife212 said:
The issue is, how would you actually do it? Nowhere is going to sell you 14 million tickets. Filling them in would take too long as well.

14 million seconds = 0.443642705 years

Some kind of automated system which bought the tickets and sent the numbers off would be required, and I'm certain you would be barred from recieving the prize.

Yup, you actually HAVE to buy 14million tickets, you can't just go up to Camelot and put down £14million and say "this should cover all the combination" the rules states you actually have to buy a ticket.

The thing to do I suppose is buy it online?

Vonhelmet · 28 Sep 2010 at 19:53

Raymond Lin said:
Yup, you actually HAVE to buy 14million tickets, you can't just go up to Camelot and put down £14million and say "this should cover all the combination" the rules states you actually have to buy a ticket.

The thing to do I suppose is buy it online?

You'd need a large syndicate to pull it off in time. Business opportunity, anyone? Get 2,800 investors to throw in £5,000 each, with the promise of BIG RETURNS. I reckon you could buy 5,000 tickets in a week. Assuming 1 minute per ticket, that's... how long... about 12 hours per day of ticket buying. A pain in the arse, but do-able.

unwashed potato! · 28 Sep 2010 at 21:22

lol this thread is hilarious. i can just imagine the thoughts running through a few ocuk members minds right now about the lottery.

Von Smallhausen · 28 Sep 2010 at 21:28

Mammalian said:
lol this thread is hilarious. i can just imagine the thoughts running through a few ocuk members minds right now about the lottery.

The only thoughts for me is that I haven't won in 16 years.

feeddagoat · 28 Sep 2010 at 21:29

Gornall said:
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.

Flipping a coin isn't a great example since coins aren't exactly the same weight on both sides. Also if its flipped with the same technique and strength of flip it is possible to land on the same side every time. I have done this before as a party trick and made a fair bit of money out of it lol.

TheCenturion · 28 Sep 2010 at 21:42

In theory, each number has an equal chance of being picked, therefore no combination is more likely than any other.

There are 50 numbers right? Therefore, the chance of somebody winning is:

1/50!

Which is not a very big chance

Skull · 28 Sep 2010 at 21:55

Uh...

FreeStream · 28 Sep 2010 at 22:22

TheCenturion said:
In theory, each number has an equal chance of being picked, therefore no combination is more likely than any other.

There are 50 numbers right? Therefore, the chance of somebody winning is:

1/50!

Which is not a very big chance

Erm, it doesn't quite work like that.

It's 1/50 * 1/49 * 1/48 *1/47 * 1/46 * 1/45 (Assuming 6 balls) is 1 in 11,441,304,000...

Also that's assuming that each ball has a perfectly equal chance of being picked. However I suspect the chances are that it's more like 1 in 15 million...

wannabedamned · 28 Sep 2010 at 22:27

I dont get this atall, I was never good with this sort of thing. But surely the odds of numbers being in sequence are slimmer than the odds the numbers will not. And surely that would make a difference to the statistics overall

mame · 28 Sep 2010 at 22:27

Don't the Mafia but all the combinations of lottery tickets on certain rollovers? Or is that an urban myth

Vonhelmet · 28 Sep 2010 at 22:44

wannabedamned said:
I dont get this atall, I was never good with this sort of thing. But surely the odds of numbers being in sequence are slimmer than the odds the numbers will not. And surely that would make a difference to the statistics overall

No, but your mind is designed to spot patterns, so you think it is special.

Vonhelmet · 28 Sep 2010 at 22:53

Concorde Rules said:
Erm, it doesn't quite work like that.

It's 1/50 * 1/49 * 1/48 *1/47 * 1/46 * 1/45 (Assuming 6 balls) is 1 in 11,441,304,000...

Also that's assuming that each ball has a perfectly equal chance of being picked. However I suspect the chances are that it's more like 1 in 15 million...

It's actually 49C6, which is 49 * 48 * 47 * 46 * 45 * 44 / 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 13,983,816

Greenlizard0 · 28 Sep 2010 at 22:56

Why are the odds like that? Instinct says to me it should be 1/49*1/48 etc.

Ekim · 28 Sep 2010 at 23:01

wannabedamned said:
I dont get this atall, I was never good with this sort of thing. But surely the odds of numbers being in sequence are slimmer than the odds the numbers will not. And surely that would make a difference to the statistics overall

The odds of them being drawn in sequence is higher than normal (i.e. 1 being the first ball drawn, 2 being the second ball drawn, 3 being third etc.) But for all 6 to be drawn in any order in the main drawer is the exact same probability as any other combination.

Greenlizard0 said:
Why are the odds like that? Instinct says to me it should be 1/49*1/48 etc.

Because when all 49 balls are available you have 6 balls that you are waiting on

6/49, then 5/48, 4/47, 3/46, 2/45, 1/44

its 1/49, 1/48 etc if you want them to be drawn in order.

Sirrel Squirrel · 28 Sep 2010 at 23:02

Imagine buying 14 million tickets and missing one combination, which wins.

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

Vonhelmet · 28 Sep 2010 at 23:07

Greenlizard0 said:
Why are the odds like that? Instinct says to me it should be 1/49*1/48 etc.

Think about it as 6/49 * 5/48 * 4/47 and so on.

There is a given set of 6 balls that must come up for you to win the jackpot. However, it doesn't matter what order they come in. As such, the first of the 6 balls can be any one of 6, hence 6/49. On the next ball, there are 5 remaining that would fit your combination, and you're still good if any one of them comes up. So, that's 5/48. So on for the other 4.

A straightforward 1/49 * 1/48 * etc would apply if you had to get the numbers in the correct order, as in that case, of your 6 number "combination" (technically a permutation) you can only accept one specific number on each draw.

Weebull · 29 Sep 2010 at 00:34

Tell you what, if you're still alive in 100,000 years, let us know how waiting for 14 million lottery results to come through went.

V4NT0M · 29 Sep 2010 at 00:48

Probability really grinds my gears.

thepeganator · 29 Sep 2010 at 01:07

vonhelmet said:
You'd need a large syndicate to pull it off in time. Business opportunity, anyone? Get 2,800 investors to throw in £5,000 each, with the promise of BIG RETURNS. I reckon you could buy 5,000 tickets in a week. Assuming 1 minute per ticket, that's... how long... about 12 hours per day of ticket buying. A pain in the arse, but do-able.

mame said:
Don't the Mafia but all the combinations of lottery tickets on certain rollovers? Or is that an urban myth

Being in a syndicate is completely legal, and there have been occasions where large syndicates have calculated the odds and attempted to cover all the solutions.

One time they managed to only buy about 8m tickets, but still covered it.

Usually they take over a shop for the required time.

Can't find the link I read this all on :mad:

Jordw · 29 Sep 2010 at 02:21

D3lirious said:
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.

Best reply. It's an interesting thought.

On the subject of lottery, I had a chat about it recently. Wouldn't you just kick yourself if you did the lottery with the same set of numbers for 20 years and didn't win and then changed your numbers for 1 week and your old numbers came up.