South Georgia couple wins $270M Mega Millions lottery jackpot

If they used the six birthdates from oldest to youngest, the baby of the group's birthday by default would be the mega ball.

"LUCK"

Of course, because they could have used the reverse order and the oldest's birthday would have been the mega ball and they would have a 4 - 0 winner for $150. All 6 birthdays matched the 6 winning numbers so they had a 1 of 6 chance of putting them in the correct order to match the mega ball. Any of the other 5 orders would give them a $150 win.

In the interview I saw, he said his daughter called and asked if he had played the grandkids' birthdays. They were probably watching TV, heard the jackpot was high, and mentioned playing those numbers. I'll bet the numbers on the other ticket were dates too.

We would have to see how many 5 + 0 and 4 + 1 winners to check the theory that all low numbers produce more winners. That effect might be true on 6/49 games but not so obvious on Mega or Powerball.

I think it's a pretty neat story and shows that it's possible for anybody hit the jackpot.

The couple opted for the cash option, bringing their winnings down to $164 million.

If they were smart, they would get a financial advisor now.  Even in relatively safe accounts, you can earn about 5% without thinking.  That would be 8.2 Million a year, and NEVER touching the principal.

love stories like these.especially when people pick their own numbers.wow 270 million......

The couple opted for the cash option, bringing their winnings down to $164 million....

LOL!!!         bringing their winnings DOWN to $164 million....

i'd love to bring mine down to 164 million!

The jackpot was $164 so their only choice was if they wanted the lottery to buy them a 26 year $270 million annuity.  How do you know they won't parlay what they get after taxes into $500 million?

"If they were smart, they would get a financial advisor now."

Unless they are planning on turning all of it into cash and stuffing their mattresses, they will get plenty of financial advice. I wonder what kind of advice a financial advisor would give them before spending the 2 bucks to play their grandkids' birthdays. They could get 10 cents on that $2 without thinking.

Congratulations to the winners, however I wouldn't want to go public before claiming the jackpot. All that media right in front of their house letting the world know who it was that won, and I'm sure the neighbors were hitting them up for money the second they heard the words "lottery winners". I don't have a problem going public at the time of claiming, but not before. All that ticket is, is a fragile piece of paper.

Must be nice. I bought $5 in tickets for powerball and got 4 of 5 for $100. I was pissed though, thought it was all clicking then it stopped. One more number $200,000! Or the powerball for $10,000, and both number the jackpot! That sucked worse than getting no numbers!

 Congrats to the Couple They are going to have lots new friends very quickly . Well I guess you win some and then you lose a lot thats how it goes with me I also used birthday numbers but unfortunately  I didnt have anyone with the number 12  or the mega ball 10  so I guess I will settle for $100

"We would have to see how many 5 + 0 and 4 + 1 winners to check the theory that all low numbers produce more winners. That effect might be true on 6/49 games but not so obvious on Mega or Powerball."

I'd suggest that the effect should be more obvious with MM and PB. The larger the matrix, the more the distribution will be skewed if people are more likely to choose birthday numbers than other numbers. At the extreme, every combination in a 5/31 game uses all birthday numbers. For a 6/49 game 5.3% of the combinations can be made with birthday numbers. For MM it's only 3%. Since a smaller percentage of combinations are from birthday numbers, any increase in winners when the results are all birthday numbers is more significant.

Does anybody really think that using birthdays (or ages of children and grandchildren, which will also skew the numbers towards the low end) isn't one of the ways that people choose what numbers to play? I'd figure the only real question is how much that  increases the percentage of tickets with low numbers. Here are the results for the last two MM drawings.

Tickets sold        all 5 white balls         4+1           4+0
(millions)
102.7                     43                      245           9478
  77.4                     15                        85           4456

The last drawing sold 1.33 times as many tickets as the previous drawing, but there were almost 3 times as many  matches for 5 balls and 4+1, and just over twice as many for 4+0.  The results of the previous drawing were at the high end of the matrix, so perhaps that reduced the number of winners we would have seen with a more uniform distribution. I'd say the 4+0 results  strongly suggest that birthday numbers are played about twice as often as random combinations. If 70% of tickets are QP that doubling comes from only 30% of the tickets.

Why is it "incredible that they hit MM with all low numbers considering the matrix"?

As Lucky Larry speculated, they chose the MB of 10 for October, but the article I saw suggested that there wasn't any specific reason for choosing it. Since they apparently had only 5 birthdays to choose from they were guaranteed at least 5+0, given the results.