A Couple of Observations about Huge PowerBall Drawings

Reply #11

eddessaknight — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 06:47:11 GMT

The only reliable way to predict the future is to create it - to lose for the players?

Fortuna

Eddessa_Knight

Reply #10

Madonnasnowden7 — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 03:44:39 GMT

After reading your post I agree about the computer generated number's, I've told to use the numbers from family first, and close relation-ships next.

I notice that Chicago's channel 9, WGN no longer shows the drawing, with the assistance of a WGN staff member. I did not think it would have lasted as long as it did, can't have human inter-action except for the games that require a Copa, I think I spelled correctly, if not bear with new, There was a seen with one of the staff shook the tube whe... [ More ]

Reply #9

LottoMetro — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 01:19:56 GMT

Don't forget to change sign of the exponent.

Alternatively, one may use this formula:

((combinations-1)/combinations)^tickets

These are not identical but the difference is quite small

Reply #8

Murgatroyd — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 00:10:46 GMT

It's 292 million to one, and the chance of there not being a winning ticket is one in e(tickets sold/292,201,338), where e is the base of the natural logarithm (about 2.718).

Reply #7

LottoMetro — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 17:15:33 GMT

Proportionally speaking there would be more duplicates with self-picks. While more quick picks are sold, people are more biased than the computer in choosing their numbers. So we would expect to see large clusters of duplicates based on patterns, lucky numbers etc. There have been several studies on this on lotteries in Canada and Italy. The advice that most academics would give players (outside of not playing whatsoever) would be to choose high numbers or quick picks.

Reply #6

Luminus — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 08:46:08 GMT

It's not unbelievable, when you sit down and actually try it yourself. You want a breakdown? See below. Using a certain range for each position of the game, you can see the results I got from the last game for 600 lines (I can do as many lines as you like). I've deleted all the lines that had zero hits. See any dupes?

:

:

Last Winning Numbers

Power

:

:

:

:

Pattern:

1-16

17-31

32-33

34-59

60-69

:

:

:

:

Whit... [ More ]

Reply #5

Power8411 — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 08:12:57 GMT

Since it is acclaimed that the odds of winning the big one are app 250 mill to one,what are the odds of a winning ticket in not being picked if more than 250 million lines are sold?

I guess the odds are as much chance as you throwing a marble on the beach and try to pick it up blindfolded in just the one attempt.

I look at it this way.If you don't get the jackpot this time,there'll be another one over the horizon to have a crack at.

Reply #4

duckman — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 07:49:27 GMT

Yes, that is why for Powerball I usually only buy one number combination I pick and one quick pick. Luck is the number one factor in winning...

Reply #3

duckman — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 07:47:01 GMT

It would be interesting to see a number combination breakdown for a drawing and see how many duplicates there were from quick picks...

Reply #2

Deeyar948 — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 07:34:41 GMT

Also goes to show buying more than couple tickets doesnt really help your chances

Reply #1

benmas — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 07:34:22 GMT

quick picks are randomly generated by a computer. how they do that i do not know... but in theory one can make an argument saying that the algorithm they use is not truly random and is repeating the lines after say 200 million out of 292million possible

A Couple of Observations about Huge PowerBall Drawings

duckman — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 07:27:33 GMT

Now that Powerball frenzy will continue at an even faster pace with the new $1.3B estimated jackpot (sure to surpass $1.5B by Wednesday's drawing), here are a couple of observations:

* The huge jackpots are a big reason why computer generated random drawings are a bad idea - It's almost unbelievable that no one won the last $900M+ drawing. With this in mind, had Powerball used computer generated random number draws, there would be a large number of people questioning whether or not it was... [ More ]