New Jersey United States
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May 31, 2000
27,873 Posts Online
Quote: Originally posted by HiFi on Mar 26, 2011
well if new york won again, how many times have they won this year? i think they should only be allowed to sell so many tickets so that other states have more equal odds of winning.
DFW, Texas United States
Member #78,626
August 18, 2009
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Quote: Originally posted by rdgrnr on Mar 26, 2011
Welp, guess it's time to get back to work on my Powerball Strategery.
My Powerball strategery consists of getting a ticket every-now-and-then, and getting really drunk when I don't win. That sounds like a good idea about now.
I suspect I'd get really drunk if I did win, but I'll hafta wait to find out.
The Hall Of The Mountain Kings Tennessee United States
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April 28, 2009
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Quote: Originally posted by Longarm on Mar 26, 2011
My Powerball strategery consists of getting a ticket every-now-and-then, and getting really drunk when I don't win. That sounds like a good idea about now.
I suspect I'd get really drunk if I did win, but I'll hafta wait to find out.
NY United States
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October 16, 2005
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Quote: Originally posted by GuessWhat! on Mar 26, 2011
Have You ?
I would not know where to begin.
All I know is the drawing happens in Atlanta...some times Time Square.
The MM web site is (or was) maintained by the VA Lottery.
I don't know of a "MUSL" equivalent to MM or who to contact.
Do you ?
I think players would be far less inclined to quick pick if it were determined that:
(1) A substantial number of combinations go UNCOVERED.
and...
(2) A substantial number of cominations played were quick picks.
We can reasonably believe that quick picks are random but what about
the pleasure lotteries enjoy from all the attention that comes from rollovers ?
It suggests to me that quicks picks MAY be BIASED to repeat.
The lottery obviously has the information (or can get it if they don't track it), but you can come fairly close yourself. Based on the increase in cash value there were about 150 million tickets sold. If every ticket was played randomly that would mean that about 63% of combinations were played. That would leave 37%, or about 65 million that weren't played.
Asuming 80% of tickets were QP's that's 120 of the 150 million that were sold. 80% of the 63% of combinations that would be played randomly is 50.4%, so we can assume that's what was covered by QP tickets. Played randomly the other 30 million tickets would account for 12.6% of combinations, but we know that a lot of people play numbers that aren't random. That means there's a lot more duplication than there would be if all tickets were random.
We know a lot of people play birthday numbers, and if you only use those for the first 5 numbers you're choosing from just under 4.5% of the possible combinations, and that's based on using all 46 mega balls. Sticking to 4 birthday numbers and 1 number from the rest accounts for just under 21%. Then there are the people who fill out the playslip with the various patterns. Many years ago NY advertised that something like 10,000 people played each of the two diagonals in lotto. It's a safe bet that less than 100 combinations form varous patterns that account for at least 100,000 tickets, and pprobably far more. If those non-random combinations are twice as likely to be played (as an average), the 20% of self picks would only account for about 6.3% of combinations. That would mean that a total of about 56.7% of all combinations were in play, and 43.3% weren't played at all.
We can also figure out for ourselves whether or not there's a significant bias in QP's by looking at the 2nd place winners. Individual results can be expected to vary quite a bit, but we can look at a long term trend and see if the number of 2nd place winners fits with probability. In the case of the current drawing, the 32 winners seems to be pretty close to what we would expect from random results. The 32 tickets probably represent 24 to 26 of the mega numbers, which is 52 to 56.5%, which is fairly close to the total percentage of combinations that should have been played. Other drawings have followed similar patterns. When the number of 2nd place winners does seem to be a bit high or low the winning numbers usually look like ones that people would play more or less often than average. I can also be pretty safe in promising you that there are plenty of people who are far better than most of us at probability and statistics looking at such things. If lottery results had any substantial departure from what's expected plenty of people would be able to show us proof.