Pennsylvania Lottery: 474 keeps coming up in Pennsylvania LotteryWanna make a quick $250? Or maybe more?
If recent history is any indication -- which it isn't -- play 474 on today's Daily Number, and you just may beat the long odds. The number has hit four times since May 17, when 474 was drawn as the midday Daily Number. On May 29, the number hit during the evening drawing. And Saturday, the number hit twice, once in the afternoon and again that evening.
The odds of that happening are quite literally one in a million. That's better than your odds of hitting a Powerball jackpot but less than your odds of drowning in your own bathtub sometime in the next 12 months.
The odds of four winning plays on a number in 27 days -- 54 drawings in all -- are one in 3.32 million, or about the same as being electrocuted by a live wire sometime within the next year.
Saturday was the first time since the Pennsylvania Lottery unveiled its midday drawing in February 2003 that the same number has hit twice in the same day.
And people apparently are starting to notice.
While 474 is far from the most popular number to play -- those are so-called "triples," like 777 or 000 -- almost twice as many people cashed in on the Saturday evening drawing, which had 2,022 winners, than did on the May 29 evening drawing, which had 1,135 winners, according to Lottery statistics. Same goes for the midday drawing -- the May 17 number paid 251 winners, while Saturday's midday drawing had 516 winners.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called the Pennsylvania Lottery's security division in Harrisburg, but nobody answered the phones there yesterday and a message left there wasn't returned. But rest assured, the 474 winning streak is a coincidence, with the odds of its coming up the same as for any other number, and not a fix.
To select the midday number, the Pennsylvania Lottery uses a random number generator, essentially a computer that spits out a three-digit number once a day. The evening drawing, overseen by a lottery official, is pulled by a senior citizen. The senior draws three bouncing balls from three separate machines.
To ensure that the numbered balls don't develop imperfections or deformities that would result in a greater-than-average selection rate, the sets of balls for the Daily Number, as well as the Big 4, are replaced every other month.
Adding to the security, nine sets of numbered balls -- marked 0 through 9 -- are rotated among the three machines. Each night, the same senior who draws the winning numbers also selects the set of lottery balls that will be used for that night's game.
State Department of Revenue spokesman Steve Kniley said lottery officials were uncertain if the same Daily Number had ever hit on consecutive days before the advent of the midday drawing. On April 19, 2003, the numbers 752 and 572 hit back to back, meaning that if you had "boxed" the same numbers that day -- playing 752, 572 and, say, 257 -- you would have won each time.
