9/26 Powerball statistical anomoly

Reply #10

RJOh — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:36:25 GMT

Higher tiered prizes can be won consistently now by playing a lot of combinations but it not practical, the payouts won't cover the cost. The point I was making was that if any of the systems advertised to give an advantage to a lottery players really worked then when they did work everyone using them would win big at the same time like all those players who got their numbers from fortune cookies and more recently from the TV show.

Reply #9

Rehoboth — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:06:09 GMT

If higher tiered prizes could be won consistently by reference to some system, than we would see the concept of a lottery eventually abandoned. It would become unsustainable. Its sort of like alchemy. If someone actually eventually found a way to make gold from common elements, gold would eventually become worthless, thus making the discovery worthless.

I note that Powerball has a rule that protects them from non-random win frequencies of the type discussed on this thread. They have a... [ More ]

Reply #8

RJOh — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:09:09 GMT

If there was a source that was causing more people to win the higher tier prizes consistently than expected then more states would adapt a policy like California where all games payouts are parti-mutual rather than fixed amounts. As long as it only happens rarely those states probably gain more than they lose when groups of players pick their numbers that way. All states have limits on the numbers of times pick3 and pick4 numbers can be play because that's more likely to happen in those games... [ More ]

Reply #7

RJOh — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:58:17 GMT

256 more losers would blend in a lot easier than 256 match4 winners, no one would ever notice or care about them among all the other losers.

Reply #6

time*treat — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:09:21 GMT

If this show had aired a week earlier or a week later, the number of match 4 + PB winners would have been much lower, instead. With more people playing the same losing set, the rush to investigate and question the players' number selection process looks more like Vermont maple sap in January.

Reply #5

RJOh — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 03:12:47 GMT

The same thing could happen with the LP prediction board as the source if any of the predictors ever had a lot of people playing their numbers. I don't expect that to ever happen but it would make an interesting story.

Reply #4

Rehoboth — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 22:50:19 GMT

RJOh,

Yes, it had to be something like that. I missed the article. Thanks much

Reply #3

JADELottery — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 22:15:12 GMT

Again...

Interesting, something to think about...

Reply #2

RJOh — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 22:07:43 GMT

https://www.lotterypost.com/news/163572

According to the above article, a lot of players got their numbers from the TLC Network's broadcast of How the Lottery Changed My Life after the show announced what it believed were the most frequently drawn lotto numbers,8-25-31-50-44-54.

A similar thing happened last year when a lot of players got their numbers from fortune cookies which all had the same message. In that case there were more than 120 match5 winners and the PB lottery did an inve... [ More ]

Reply #1

JADELottery — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 22:03:36 GMT

Interesting, something to think about...

9/26 Powerball statistical anomoly

Rehoboth — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:46:43 GMT

The 9/26 Powerball drawing was for a set of high numbers: 25, 27, 31, 44, 54 PB 8. This set of numbers would be expected to produce statistically expected frequencies for various win categories. That is, there is nothing in these numbers that should produce statistical aberrations, especially since that are high numbers. In this drawing, the Match 4 + PB category had 256 winners which was way above the statistical expected frequency. We would expect something much closer to around 30 winn... [ More ]