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
It seems like close to impossible because it is. But any other pick is exactly equally close to impossible.
It not that they are wrong thinking it is nearly impossibly unlikely. It is just that our “gut feel” just waaaaay overestimates how likely every other combo is. Our brains don’t easily conceptualize how unlikely “1 in a million” actually is.
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