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
Well, it is probably stupid but not for the reason your co-worker thinks it is. It’s disadvantegeous because picking last weeks winning numbers is a common strategy so in case they do hit twice in a row, you’ll likely share the win with thousands of people and your payday is much smaller. So your odds don’t get any smaller, but potential winnings almost certainly do.
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