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
There’s also (probably) never been a case where the winning numbers are exactly 100 greater than the previous lotto’s numbers. Or 5000 greater. Or 2000 less. Yet your coworker seems to think that choosing a ticket that’s 1,234 greater than the previous lotto or whatever is somehow smarter than picking a number that’s equal to the previous lotto despite there being no evidence that that’s ever worked. (I mean, obviously there’s still a chance that whatever random number you pick has been a previous gap between two adjacent lottery numbers, but my point is that the logic is insanely arbitrary)
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