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
Why would your odds be worse?
Someone asks you to pick a number between 1 and 10. They have a hat with 10 pieces of paper in it, each piece of paper is marked 1 through 10. They pull out the “4.”
They then put that piece of paper with the “4” on back in the hat and mix it up ask you to pick again.
The odds of them picking a 4 out the second time aren’t worse than the first time. In both cases, there is a 1 in 10 chance the 4 is picked. The results of the first selection have no bearing on the results of the second selection.
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