"One In 1000" Results: March 23/24, 2012

Published: March 25, 2012, 4:15 am

Programming note: Soon we'll have enough results to start doing some analysis, so stay tuned for that.

The Mega Millions numbers for March 23 were 6, 17, 19, 20, and 21, with a Mega Ball of 20. Nobody won the $290 million jackpot, and our simulated 175,000 lines didn't strike gold either. There were 39 Match 5+0 winners in real life, but in our world there were none.

Here's how our lines fared:

MATCH	WINNERS	TOTAL PRIZES
5+1	0	$0
5+0	0	$0
4+1	0	$0
4+0	10	$1,500
3+1	17	$2,550
3+0	579	$4,053
2+1	222	$2,220
1+1	1224	$3,672
0+1	2443	$4,886
TOTALS	4495	$18,881

In Powerball, more of the same. The winning numbers for March 24 were 1, 15 ,35, 37, 47, and Powerball 8. There were no winners of the $40 million jackpot and one second-prize winner. In our simulation, there were no winners in any of the top three tiers, as usual.

Here's how our 175,000 lines fared:

MATCH	WINNERS	TOTAL PRIZES
5+1	0	$0
5+0	0	$0
4+1	0	$0
4+0	14	$1,400
3+1	10	$1,000
3+0	506	$3,542
2+1	261	$1,827
1+1	1621	$6,484
0+1	3247	$12,988
TOTALS	5659	$27,241

Entry #6

Comments

GASMETERGUY - Mar 25, 2012, 12:54 pm

I do not know how you derived those 175,000 lines but you are certainly looking in the right direction. Keep up the good work.

mediabrat - Mar 25, 2012, 9:24 pm

Thanks for the support. I wrote a random number generator that comes up with the lines.

LottoBoner - Mar 26, 2012, 1:13 am

why not do a challenge of the 175,000 RNG, versus 175,000 of a "skilled gambler" or a skilled group of gamblers...with power numbers and different wheel sets...
this would be a better test for PB because of less extra balls, but extra cost to play...but you are guarentted to get the PB correct 5000 times... as opposed to 3571 times for mega millions...but it might be better with mega millions since the cost is half.

mediabrat - Mar 26, 2012, 2:44 am

Thanks for the idea, LottoBoner. I might give that a shot. It'll definitely be a good way to test the effectiveness of the various strategies discussed on the LP forums versus simple randomness.

I don't know how the RNGs in lotto terminals are programmed, but I would assume they're set to use the full matrix when printing QPs. That's what I'm seeking to emulate here. Also, the idea isn't so much to see how often I can hit the higher prizes but to see how much money I can win back.

I'm learning about this stuff as I go along, so I'll start working in the advanced concepts once I'm confident in my understanding of them and my ability to apply them to this project. I realize Todd has resources here that can do the wheeling and the other strategies, but I feel I'll understand it better if I do it myself.

Again, thank you for the idea.

"One In 1000" Results: March 23/24, 2012

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