You last visited October 16, 2008, 3:39 am
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South Georgia couple wins $270M Mega Millions lottery jackpot
I dont know where United States Member #1736 June 18, 2003 101 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 25, 2008, 2:32 pm - IP Logged |
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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! Dang I know what you mean getting so close and not winning the Jackpot... just ask the New England Patriots the same thing,,,, you know what you was closer than maybe alot of people that played Powerball... hang in there the last time I was that close was 1997 5 of 6 numbers in flalottery for 18 million I won only 1,267.00 that was it but I was happy for a few minutes and then started kicking myself
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Spartanburg, S.C. United States Member #35432 March 11, 2006 1147 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 25, 2008, 4:18 pm - IP Logged |
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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. I agree. Luck played a big part. Joe  Please Pray For Our Troops & Their Families
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Illinois United States Member #30849 January 17, 2006 3449 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 25, 2008, 5:19 pm - IP Logged |
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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. KY Floyd
Why was it incredible they hit with all low numbers?
The numbers were 7 12 13 19 22, Mega 10
In a game with an upper matrix of 56 how many times do you think that all the numbers drawn have been no higher than 22?
If I paid you a dollar for every time that happened, would you be willing to pay me a dollar for every drawing that produced a number higher than 22? I'd even let you include before the matrix expanded.
I'll let you do the search, drawing by drawing....
MAVEN U. always omnipresent on LP. It's Lotto, not horseshoes or artillery!
close doesn't count! I sell everything at a loss but make up for it in volume
- Milo Minderbinder, Catch-22
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Atwater, Ohio United States Member #33045 February 14, 2006 1216 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 25, 2008, 5:32 pm - IP Logged |
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"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. I meant a 6/49 game should have more multiple jackpot winners than Mega Millions when all the numbers are under 32. People that use birthdates are less likely to box their numbers in either game and even with all 6 numbers, having the correct mega ball is 1 chance in 6. They will either win the jackpot or have 4 + 0 and win $150.
Dividing the total ticket sales by 3.9 million gives a ballpark figure of how many 5 + 0 prize winners there should be. It would around 26 in this drawing so there was a 56% chance the jackpot would be hit. I wonder if anybody else matched all 6 numbers but didn't have them in the correct order where 10 was the mega ball.
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United States Member #4963 May 30, 2004 2339 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 25, 2008, 6:04 pm - IP Logged |
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CONGRAT'$$$$$$
  
UR the BEST>>>>>
LOL
PSYKOMO
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United States Member #4963 May 30, 2004 2339 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 25, 2008, 8:32 pm - IP Logged |
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CONGRAT'$$$$$$
UR the BEST>>>>>
LOL
PSYKOMO South Georgia (COPULE???)
TELL us what UR "R" GOING to DO??????????????????????????
PSYKOMO>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
LU'$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"YOU"!
PLEASE>>>>>>>IISTEN>>>>>>>>>>Too>>>>>>>
THE FABRIC >>>
"THE">"FABRIC"
THANK'$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
 
LOL
PSYKOMO
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NY United States Member #24178 October 16, 2005 1356 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 26, 2008, 1:08 am - IP Logged |
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KY Floyd
Why was it incredible they hit with all low numbers?
The numbers were 7 12 13 19 22, Mega 10
In a game with an upper matrix of 56 how many times do you think that all the numbers drawn have been no higher than 22?
If I paid you a dollar for every time that happened, would you be willing to pay me a dollar for every drawing that produced a number higher than 22? I'd even let you include before the matrix expanded.
I'll let you do the search, drawing by drawing....
MAVEN U. always omnipresent on LP. You're asking the wrong questions, so you get the wrong answers. Think about this question: is there any reason at all that the winning combination was less likely to be drawn than any *one* of the other 175 million combinations? Perhaps you've heard that they only draw one winning combination?
The winning numbers are whatever they are, and every time they draw a set of winning numbers the result is the only combination that can be made from the 5 regular numbers and the 1 mega number that are drawn. The number of combinations using only 22 numbers (no matter how you choose them) is much smaller than the number of combinations using 56 numbers, but that has nothing to do with your chances of winning. Having a combination that has a pattern or distribution similar to the winning numbers doesn't win you squat.
If you pay me a dollar every time the winning combination has no number above 22 and I pay you a dollar every time you pick the winning combination, which one of us will come out ahead?
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NY United States Member #24178 October 16, 2005 1356 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 26, 2008, 1:23 am - IP Logged |
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I meant a 6/49 game should have more multiple jackpot winners than Mega Millions when all the numbers are under 32. People that use birthdates are less likely to box their numbers in either game and even with all 6 numbers, having the correct mega ball is 1 chance in 6. They will either win the jackpot or have 4 + 0 and win $150.
Dividing the total ticket sales by 3.9 million gives a ballpark figure of how many 5 + 0 prize winners there should be. It would around 26 in this drawing so there was a 56% chance the jackpot would be hit. I wonder if anybody else matched all 6 numbers but didn't have them in the correct order where 10 was the mega ball. Since the duplications are concentrated in only 3% of combinations for MM and 5.3% of the combinations in a 6/49 game we should expect more multiple winners in MM, assuming each game sells the same percentage of combinations. Selling more tickets makes any game more likely to produce more winners at every prize level.
If there were no duplicate combinations (and we know there were a lot) the 103 million tickets sold would have accounted for almost 59% of the combinations, so we could expect a 59% chance of a winner. Since we know there will always be a lot of duplicates, and a concentration of birthday numbers, far less than 59% of combinations were sold. That means that there would be far less than a 59% chance of a winner. Once the wining numbers were drawn, OTOH, that same concentration of birthday numbers made the chance of a winner more than 59%.
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Sunny SW Florida United States Member #25708 November 5, 2005 4068 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 26, 2008, 1:26 am - IP Logged |
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KY Floyd
Why was it incredible they hit with all low numbers?
The numbers were 7 12 13 19 22, Mega 10
In a game with an upper matrix of 56 how many times do you think that all the numbers drawn have been no higher than 22?
If I paid you a dollar for every time that happened, would you be willing to pay me a dollar for every drawing that produced a number higher than 22? I'd even let you include before the matrix expanded.
I'll let you do the search, drawing by drawing....
MAVEN U. always omnipresent on LP. I agree with Coin Toss. Even though any combination of numbers can win, seeing all low numbers like this is extremely rare. I don't track PB or MM, but I can't find a single combination in FL that doesn't have one number in the 30s, 40s or 50s. I just glanced at all the winning Lotto combinations picked so far this year, the 104 picked in 2007 and the 104 picked in 2006, the 104 picked in 2005 --- and I can't even find one! Plus, keep in mind that our state Lotto has less than 1 in 23 million odds, not 1 in 176 million!
We have a similar game to MM that is called MegaMoney. Instead of 5 there are 4 balls (1-44) and 1 MB (1-22) The odds are "only" 1 in 2,986,522 and most picks have at least 1 number in the 30s or 40s. There have been a few combinations with all low numbers, but the game is twice a week and there are only a few each year.
Therefore, picking 5 numbers for Mega Millions, all being 22 or less, then picking the correct Megaball number, that also being 10 or less ... I would say that's very remarkable! Very, very, very lucky too.
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Illinois United States Member #30849 January 17, 2006 3449 Posts Offline |
| Posted: February 26, 2008, 1:48 am - IP Logged |
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KY Floyd
In the "Statistics Method" thread in thos forum RJOh posted:
"Since its last matrix change, MegaMillions alone have had seven drawings where all the numbers were 31 or less.
09/27/05 - 14 17 26 27 28 +05
11/08/05 - 08 16 21 25 27 +16
03/21/06 - 04 16 17 28 31 +08
04/10/07 - 07 15 16 19 28 +10
06/15/07 - 01 05 16 26 30 +21
06/22/07 - 11 14 21 24 31 +23
02/22/08 - 07 12 13 19 22 +10 "
Then I added:
Ok, guesses on the number of drawings for the remainder of '05, butfiguring 2 for Sep of '05, 4 for Oct, 4 for Nov, and 5 for Dec
that makes '05 ((27-12-31) 15
'06 104
'07 104
thus far in '08 16
That makes 239 drawings, 7 of those had all numbers 31 or less.
7/239 = .029%
97.1% of those drawings had numbers over 31.
I think I'd "play the percentages".
________________________________________
The 2.9% of drawings with all the numbers 31 and under compare to the 97.1% of the time speaks for itself. Volumes.
As for the paying each other a dollar, the hypothetical situation was strictly all 31 and under or not, not picking the winning combination. Nice atteempt at a cyber version NYC 3-card monte street hustel, but the results above tell me that for every$3 I'd have to give you, you would have to give me $97.
It's Lotto, not horseshoes or artillery!
close doesn't count! I sell everything at a loss but make up for it in volume
- Milo Minderbinder, Catch-22
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