NEEO:
While I'm NOT doubting what you say, I can tell you that the membership here is comprised of some of the best lottery game experts in the world, and that's not an exaggeration. We have members from every state (including those that don't have a state lottery), and nearly every country on the planet, and their common passion is analyzing and playing their favorite games. That's why LP.com is divided into so many different forums which correspond to different games, such as Pick-3, Pick-4, Pick-5, Jackpot Games and Instant Games (scratch-off tickets). If you'd take a stroll through the Mathematics section and read a few posts, you'll get an idea of just how serious some of us are about winning.
You chose to title your thread, "Mega Millions is Rigged! I Proved It," so I clicked on your topic because I wanted to SEE your evidence. To be fair, you started out well, as you captured my interest by stating, "They don't put all 56 white ball numbers into the pool! They only put 49 numbers of the 56 into the pool!" But when I found no facts or any additional evidence to support your claims, I could only shake my head, because I knew what was coming next; I could feel the crowd gathering with their torches and pitchforks to drive you from the village.
Before you get angry, you should know that both LosingJeff and I have been where you are; we incurred the wrath of the membership when we discovered that the Hoosier Lottery was (and still is) actively engineering the results of their drawings. Please read on, because I really am trying to help you.
Sfilippo was actually very kind with his comments, trying to point out that you were effectively damaging your own integrity by posting such claims without providing any actual evidence to support them. You chose to respond in anger. Then, JONNIE rang in with "I actually watched the drawing last night on NJN. Didn't look rigged at all to me- all the numbers were in play. Nothing out of the ordinary, except I didn't win. (What a shock!)," to which you responded, "JONNIE trust me! It is rigged! I know how to tell such things! And I only give details to those whom I consider [to have] open minds! But don't be fooled! I know the info sounds far fetched, but it isn't!"
Now, there's a major problem with this approach: Specifically, convincing those who already believe what you say is not only unnecessary, it's a total waste of everyone's time. The difficulty lies in convincing the SKEPTICS that your claims have validity and warrant further investigation. If you can do that, you'll have people lining up behind you to help you gather more information and evidence.
The "debate" continues: Meriwetherman asks, "Now, how can you determine all the white balls are not floating around in that bin?" You replied, "Just from a simple mathematical derivative! I hate to be so secretive, but from all the anguish and sensitive people around here, I will not go into detail! But if you believe it's not rigged, then it's your belief; I just don't want people thinking that this game is playing fairly, because on some drawings they are not playing as you might think! I made some predictions on certain numbers and such, and they came! DOES THAT MEAN I FIGURED THE MM OUT? No, it just means I know something others don't, and I went out on a limb by revealing the above in this forum, but I see now I will have to keep all thoughts to myself!"
I'm still unclear on exactly what it is you've "revealed" here. Your defensive responses to those who simply want to see your evidence are entirely unfounded. If you want us to believe you, then post the "simple mathematical derivative" which led to the concrete conclusion stated in your title. The idea is to gather support for your arguments, not to alienate and insult those who don't know you personally, and therefore don't know you well enough to simply "take your word for it." If someone you've never met told you they had discovered that the oxygen content was disappearing from our atmosphere, would you simply take them at their word, run out in a panic and buy truckloads of oxygen cylinders and a supply of masks for yourself and your family, or would you require more evidence in order to justify that significant expenditure of your savings? If someone tells you it's 3:00 in the afternoon when it's pitch black outside, don't you have a natural instinct to look at your watch (assuming you don't live in Alaska)? The members who have taken the time to post responses to your thread are not calling you a liar; they're simply saying, "Show me WHY you believe this to be true, and allow me to judge for myself." That's not an unreasonable request.
You can see how this can be done by researching some of my own posts. Just search "Hoosier Lottery" in the Lottery Discussion or Lottery News forums. LosingJeff and I made the newspapers twice, because we conducted an exhaustive four-year investigation and gathered solid evidence to support our claims. This evidence was also sufficient to convince most of the skeptics on LP.com that we weren't merely speculating, and that we weren't just sore losers who cried "Foul" when we didn't win the most recent jackpot. The proof we provided could easily be verified by anyone who cared to look into it themselves, because we also took the trouble to post the sources of our information. It was very difficult to endure the initial taunts from those who didn't believe us and, admittedly, there will always be those who choose to stick their heads in the sand and ignore ANY evidence that proves a game is "unwinnable," but you won't find many of them here.
When we began posting our claims on LotteryPost.com, Todd was the biggest skeptic of all and, to his credit, he wasn't shy with his comments. However, we didn't become defensive, we simply kept posting our supporting facts as we uncovered them. We met with and interviewed hundreds of players; we went to Indianapolis and scheduled meetings with several Hoosier Lottery officials and employees; we cornered a few Indiana state representatives (one of whom actually sponsored new legislation due entirely to what we had discovered), and we met with lottery directors, ex-lottery directors and many other lottery executives from Indiana and several other states as well. We wrote letters and emails, we made phone calls and we traveled to distant locations to meet with various people who possessed the answers to our questions. We did whatever was necessary to get the next piece of the puzzle, and the next, and the next and so on. We did all of that and more, at our own expense, sacrificing our own spare time and neglecting our families (who, thankfully, heartily supported our efforts) for several days and, sometimes, even weeks at a time while we chased down the next link in the chain.
At this point, I'd be willing to bet that your "proof" is nothing more substantial than a glaring suspicion brought on by the observance of a common anomaly which is present in both the PowerBall AND the MegaMillions games. Experienced players of either game recognize and willingly accept the fact that the odds against them are astronomical, and that, most of the time, the numbers drawn will not match those on their tickets BECAUSE the odds are so great. It's the challenge of overcoming those odds which appeals to most of us, and winning a jackpot is merely a byproduct of that objective; the money is viewed as a reward for all the hard work we've put into our chosen game over the years. When the numbers are drawn and we've missed our target, we go back to our charts and graphs and try again. When something happens that doesn't look right, the amateurs jump directly to the conclusion that the games MUST be rigged because, well, look what happened - 2, 4, and 6 came out consecutively in the last drawing, and that just NEVER happens, so how could it NOT be rigged?
Those of us with more experience understand that those things DO happen now and then. Just because a certain combination is rarely drawn or is considered unlikely to occur does NOT mean that it CANNOT be drawn. Likewise, that a certain combination of numbers has never appeared is no indication that it's more likely to come up in tonight's drawing. The odds of winning a MegaMillions jackpot are 1 in 175,711,536. This means that there are 175,711,536 different ways to arrange 56 numbers (with no duplication) into six-number combinations. One of those combinations is 1-2-3-4-5-6, which hasn't yet been drawn in any lottery. But the POSSIBILITY exists that those very numbers COULD be drawn next Tuesday, or they might even come up in tonight's PowerBall drawing, and the drawing would still be legitimate. On the other hand, the possibility also exists that any combination of numbers which has already been drawn at some point in the past could be drawn again, and we HAVE seen this happen. Even if we assume that a combination will NEVER repeat once it's been drawn, at the rate of two drawings per week, it would take nearly 1.7 MILLION YEARS to draw every possible combination of numbers. Most of us probably won't live that long, so we tend to take these anomalies in stride and do the best we can with our predictions.
If you're really serious about this, I'd suggest you come up with something more substantial than, "I'll only reveal my proof to people who already agree with me." You have only two options from which to choose: You can either welcome your skeptics and earn the respect you deserve, or continue to shun and insult them, and earn the respect you deserve. It's up to YOU to prove your claims with verifiable facts and solid evidence. If you can't provide them, or if you're simply unwilling to present any actual proof for our scrutiny, no one will have any reason to believe you, and you can't blame us for that.