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
You’re correct. Assuming the lottery drawing is fair (eg: balls in a machine), there is no memory in the machine or balls to what was drawn last, and hence avoid being drawn the next time. Any set of numbers is just as likely as any other set of numbers, no matter what day they are drawn, or what the last or next drawing will be. It’s not like they’re removing balls from the machine after they’ve come up before – they go right back and are just as likely as any other…
Hell, if the machine did have any kind of bias to certain balls (which it shouldn’t, but just for the sake of argument let’s imagine it did), selecting the last winning lottery numbers might be a good idea since if there is a bias towards certain numbers, the last winner’s might be some of those unfair balls and hence worth picking again.
> They thought I was crazy, pointing out that probably no lottery ever rolled the same five-six winning numbers twice in a row.
This might be true, but it’s also such a rare event in the first place to even win a lottery by itself. Millions of people play the lottery every week and even then, often there are zero winners. So what are the odds of getting two back-to-back numbers when you have a few lotteries do one draw a week?
(The actual odds in any single drawing are the same as simply winning the lottery – nailing 5 or 6 exact number requirements).
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