Posted on 10/19/2005 8:48:57 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
DID ANYONE WIN?
I have friends who play the slots, they are always telling me about the jackpots they win.
I just don't know how the casinos are staying in business!
Do they know yet? Was there a winner?
Whatever happened to the Pepsi hype about giving away a billion dollars?
Look at this way. How many possible combinations are there? How many total drawings have there been? See the problem? Those numbers haven't come up because they simply haven't come up. That is all there is to it. It has nothing to do with them having a different probability than any other combination. It is a mathematical fact that the combination in question is just as likely to come up as any other.
The past cannot be used to predict the future when the exercise is a random one. It is random. The balls and the machine do not know what the prior week's drawing happened to be, even if you do, so the results have to be random by default.
Anybody that tells you otherwise is selling something, or engaging in fantasy. I think the types of things you are looking at is not unlike numerology games. Try hard enough and you can convince yourself that something is there, but it simply isn't.
Now, if you are going to win, better to have less common numbers in your picks, so that you win big - as others have pointed out.
This was done in the Virginia lottery years ago. Virginia's lotto at that time had odds in the area of 12 million to one. I seem to remember that the group of investors were only able to purchase 8 million tickets before time ran out. They were fortunate enough to have the winning combination anyway. I looked but couldn't find a link. Virginia changed the rules after that so that it wouldn't happen again.
One jackpot winner, in Oregon.
Australian syndicate wins 27 million in Virginia lottery
The odds were 7 million to one and the group was able to purchase 5 million tickets before time ran out.
How many ways are there to make a seven from a pair of dice as compared to a two (snake eyes) or twelve (box cars)?
Now do you get my drift?
How many ways are there to make a seven from a pair of dice as compared to a two (snake eyes) or twelve (box cars)?
Now do you get my drift?
Yes, I do get your drift and it is 100% wrong.
Count the number of ways you can make a seven with a pair of dice and then count the number of ways you can make "box cars" or "snake eyes", then you will see why seven is made more frequently.
With lottery balls there are only one of each number and a particular ball can appear as only one number and any given number can come up only one time in a drawing. Comparing that to a die cube is comparing apples and oranges.
That's a good point, but it has no bearing on a lottery game involving the random selection of numbered balls. The number 7 comes up frequently in dice games because these games involve the adding of two discrete random events.
Think of it this way:
Roll a pair of dice, but do them one at a time and compute your odds of various combinations after your first roll. If the first roll of the dice is anything but a 1, then you have absolutely no chance of getting "snake eyes" after the second roll. If the first roll of the dice is anything but a 6, then you have absolutely no chance of getting "box cars" after the second roll.
Conversely, you will always have a 1 in 6 chance of getting a 7 after the second roll regardless of what you roll the first time. If you roll a 1 on the first cast, you must get a 6 on the second. If you roll a 4 on the first cast, you must get a 3 on the second. Etc., etc.
If you rolled the dice and computed your odds based on specific paired combinations rather than adding the two results together, you'll find that the odds are all exactly the same. In other words, the odds of rolling a 4 on the first cast and then a 3 on the second are exactly the same as the odds of rolling a 1 and then a 1.
Saturday's Powerball drawing is $10 million. Let's assume that someone is going to win it because someone frequently wins the lowest jackpot prize offering. If 100,000,000 tickets were sold last night, the winner was 1 out of 100,000,000. Now, not near as many will play on Saturday, so if only 2,000,000 tickets are sold, your chances are 1 out of 2,000,000.
And this proves that the lottery is a tax on idiots who don't know math...but, hey, it let's me have a nice dream for only a buck!
The odds are 1 in 165,000,000 of having the winning combo, regardless of how many tickets are sold.
Sometimes there are no winners and sometimes there are multiple winners.
I went to the historical data base for powerball and ran a search of 3 sets of numbers. results:
1,2,3,4,5 6 would have won $117 if playes every drawing since 1997
23,24,25,26,27 28 Would have own $103 same time period.
5, 8, 17, 20, 32 32 (my numbers) would have won $81, same time period. can you explain that?
Best of luck to all. It's a record jackpot now!!
What should I do? Should I wake up the wife? I don't know if I can get to sleep tonight. What if somebody breaks into my house and steals my winning ticket? What if my house burns down and the ticket burns with it?
This is going to change my entire life. I am definitely going to report to work on Monday because I have a lot of reports to get out. But I'm thinking that when all this money hits my checking account, I might not care so much about the reports anymore.
Holy crap! I'm filthy stinking rich. I now have more money than I know what to do with.
Any suggestions?
You've got me beat, I would have netted $72 with my numbers.
Also the most common recent numbers drawn are 14 and 15 tied, 30, 43, 50, 54 with the power ball numbers being 14, 17, 37. But that's for the past 6 months. As you lengthen the time out the numbers become much more equal in draws. Both the white balls and the power balls. So, it goes to show that you are just as likely to get 1,2,3,4,5 with PB 6 as any other draw. Good luck.
RU serious? Are you playing Powerball or Mega Millions? How much did you win, cause I sure know you didn't hit the jackpot. Anyway, congratulations. My suggestion would be either 1. Invest it, or 2. pay off bills. Or both if you have some left over after paying the bills.
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