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’s like flipping a coin. Just because the last 3 were heads has no impact on the next flip, it’s still a 50/50 shot (assuming a fair coin.) These are independent trials. So a repeat is still the same odds as any other number of winning the lotto – astronomical.
(Assuming the lottery in question allows duplicates, which as far as I know most do. It’s such a small chance I doubt they keep track.)
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