So a co-worker was talking about someone’s stupid plan to always play the previous winning lotto numbers. I chimed in that I was pretty sure that didn’t actually hurt their odds. They thought I was crazy, pointing out that probably no lottery ever rolled the same five-six winning numbers twice in a row.
I seem to remember that I am correct, any sequence of numbers has the same odds. But I was totally unable to articulate how that could be. Can someone help me out? It does really seem like the person using this method would be at a serious disadvantage.
Edit: I get it, and I’m not gonna think about balls anymore today.
In: Mathematics
Your co-worker operates under the Gambler’s fallacy ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy) ). It’s so common that it has it’s own wiki page.
The mistake is made in thinking that previous draws affect future ones. Betting on whether the same drawing occurs twice is very different from betting on a drawing that has occurred already before; it doesn’t click right away, but careful consideration will reveal the faulty logic.
Latest Answers