What are the odds?

Mynight said:
If somebody wins every week I suggest somebody stops leaving their DNA at crime scenes.
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At the risk of topic drift.

Do you remember that case some years ago (IIRC it was in Germany) where the Police thought they had a serial killer on the loose?

Turns out that one of the workers at the Q-Tip factory had a latex allergy so was in the habit of packing the boxes with her gloves off :eek:

(The story was also used as CSI plot)
 
Orionaut said:
At the risk of topic drift.

Do you remember that case some years ago (IIRC it was in Germany) where the Police thought they had a serial killer on the loose?

Turns out that one of the workers at the Q-Tip factory had a latex allergy so was in the habit of packing the boxes with her gloves off :eek:

(The story was also used as CSI plot)
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Lol I never knew that. Amazing!
 
Kuros said:
While you are true, you can still play the system more than the average person.
(Whilst the intelligent thing to do is just not play).

1,2,3,4,5,6 is as likely to come up as any other combination, but I'd reckon there are a fair few people who go with this sort of logic so if it does come up, you'll be sharing your win.

Pick any of the 6 numbers above 31. Statistically speaking, people who actually choose numbers generally pick things that are important to them, birthdays of children/husband/pets and the like. Therefore, if you avoid them numbers, you've got less chance of sharing the winning :)
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Oh yea, I definitely don't play 1-6 as my numbers, I just know that it's common to see a disbelieving reaction along the lines of "don't be silly, 1-6 will never come out" and you need to explain that's the whole point :D
 
About the same odds as getting the average Joe to understand that you have the same odds of predicting a random pattern of coin flips as you would expecting the same face to be flipped the same number of times in a row.
 
NexusK said:
You would have to buy every combination of numbers for a single draw to guarantee winning it, so it would cost you £233million to guarantee you won a jackpot that can only ever be ~£166million at most. If you bought 116,531,800 lucky dips you still might not win it.
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But you would also win all the other non-jackpot matches, which should make you a bit more than the outgoing expenditure.

That said, actually co-ordinating the purchase of every single combination in just a few days is nigh on impossible, plus if some other lucky sod wins the jackpot and you have to share it, you are losing money.
 
Kuros said:
While you are true, you can still play the system more than the average person.
(Whilst the intelligent thing to do is just not play).

1,2,3,4,5,6 is as likely to come up as any other combination, but I'd reckon there are a fair few people who go with this sort of logic so if it does come up, you'll be sharing your win.

Pick any of the 6 numbers above 31. Statistically speaking, people who actually choose numbers generally pick things that are important to them, birthdays of children/husband/pets and the like. Therefore, if you avoid them numbers, you've got less chance of sharing the winning :)
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This is the only lottery-number-picking advice worth heeding.

To show the maths:

n is number of flips
0.5^n = 1/116,531,800 = 7.45*10^-9

log both sides
log(0.5^n) = log(7.45*10^-9)

use rule of logs (http://www.purplemath.com/modules/logrules.htm)

n*log(0.5) = log(7.45*10^-9)
n = [log(7.45*10^-9)]/[log(0.5)]
n = 27
 
Crizzy said:
So apparently according to the euromillions website the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 116531800.

I'm trying to put this into perspective somewhat and wondered what this would equate to in terms of flipping a coin and getting the same result?

How many times would I have to flip a coin and get heads to match the probability of winning the jackpot?

My maths fail me, can anyone shed some light on it?

Cheers you clever, clever people. :p

Edit: Is it as simple as tossing a coin 116531800 times getting the same result?? I'm so awful at probabilities!
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It's even easier to break down. The odds are 1 in 116,531,800 because there are 116,531,800 possible combinations of numbers in the EuroMillions draw, and only one can win (the jackpot).
 
Kuros said:
While you are true, you can still play the system more than the average person.
(Whilst the intelligent thing to do is just not play).

1,2,3,4,5,6 is as likely to come up as any other combination, but I'd reckon there are a fair few people who go with this sort of logic so if it does come up, you'll be sharing your win.

Pick any of the 6 numbers above 31. Statistically speaking, people who actually choose numbers generally pick things that are important to them, birthdays of children/husband/pets and the like. Therefore, if you avoid them numbers, you've got less chance of sharing the winning :)
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Lol stealing my advice which i have posted several times!:P

The only stat that Camelot ever realised and may not be true now as less people play compared to back then, was that if 1,2,3,4,5,6 ever came up (just as likely as any other combo) then there would be 10,000 sharing the jackpot! :eek: They would then with even a £100m jackpot get £10,000 each. You would be gutted after thinking you had won a fortune.

And as you say people pick birthdays so the lesser prizes are always smaller when all the numbers are below 31.

When we ran a syndicate at work all out numbers were 32 to 49. When we won 5 numbers we got about £5.5k. At a similar time one of the guys got 5 numbers on a week when all of them were low and he only won £1500.

The only other advice is to avoid patterns on the actual number selection cards like corners or letters. A US state lottery was had 250 jackpot winnings with what appeared to be a random selection of numbers. It turns out it formed a perfect "M" on the selection card.

So if you follow all this advise it won't increase the chance of you winning anything however when you win (including the smaller prizes) your payouts will be maximised probably by at least double.
 
squerble said:
It's even easier to break down. The odds are 1 in 116,531,800 because there are 116,531,800 possible combinations of numbers in the EuroMillions draw, and only one can win (the jackpot).
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This.. this might be the most pointless post I've ever seen
 
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