Is it true that if you play the lotto with the last drawing’s winning numbers, your odds aren’t actually any worse? If so how?

Question

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

Answer 1

Although the odds of any particular numbers being drawn are the same, it is still a bad strategy to use well known numbers like dates and sequences such as 1234567 (or the previous numbers that were drawn). This is because it is more likely that other people chose the same numbers so if you do win you will be sharing the prize.