Uniform distribution of P3 numbers?

Reply #9

Tucker Black — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 09:21:37 GMT

Actually the quality of Excel's RAND() function is pretty good.

Reply #8

Thoth — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:09:08 GMT

It would be interesting to back test the strategy to see how many times the system hits. There is only a 63.23% chance of winning off a straight combo in 1000 consecutive games.

Reply #7

db101 — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 23:10:24 GMT

I completely agree with you and it's not my system. Excel's pseudorandom number generator is known to be pretty nonrandom so I would use something else if I was hardcore about randomness. Some polyhedral dice maybe.

Reply #6

GoogilyMoogily — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 14:52:53 GMT

If you want 3 pseudo generated random numbers, why not throw out the guesswork of that method and just generate 3 random numbers?

A B C D E

1 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =A1+B1+C1+D1 =RANK(E1,$E$1:$E$10)-1

2 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND()

3 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND()

4 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND()

5 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND()

6 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND()

7 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND()

8 =RAND() =RAND() =RAND() =RAND

Reply #5

cottoneyedjoe — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 04:54:20 GMT

Glad to help.

Reply #4

db101 — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:49:07 GMT

Thank you cottoneyedjoe! This is exactly what I was looking for. I will dust off my coding skills and try to work it out myself before asking you for the code you used. I am a little miffed that I was wrong about not being able to generate all numbers but I'm glad my intuition was right about the non-uniform distribution of the outputs. I think my friend will be very interested in what you discovered about the number 143 and the evens vs odds issue.

@mr B 216: thanks for also taking... [ More ]

Reply #3

Mr-B 216 — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:34:12 GMT

Using 1000 OH actual combined draws with no altering

371 numbers appeared 0 times

376 numbers appeared 1 time

168 numbers appeared 2 times

59 numbers appeared 3 times

19 numbers appeared 4 times

7 numbers appeared 5 times

0 numbers appeared 6 times

0 numbers appeared 7 times

Using 1000 OH combined draws with last 3 digits from (num 1 x num 2) x 7

412 numbers appeared 0 times

320 numbers appeared 1 time

168 numbers appeared 2 times

69 numbers appeared 3 time... [ More ]

Reply #2

cottoneyedjoe — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 21:48:14 GMT

This is a really cool math problem and it turns out you're partially right. All the numbers from 000 to 999 actually can be generated with your friend's method, but as you intuited, they will not be generated uniformly if you consider all 1 million possible ways of choosing the first seed and second seed values. Here is the distribution I found when I ran a script to enumerate the outputs

400 numbers: 0.04% chance of occurring each

280 numbers: 0.08% chance of occurring each

116 numbers... [ More ]

Reply #1

phileight — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 11:10:16 GMT

my math skills are not up to answering your question, so I will ask a question. If I understand this method, it rejects 999 combinations and leaves 1. over the past 600 games would it have worked? yes, then you at least break even. does it then matter that 1 or more combinations are not possible?

i did a quick check of 4000 games and it appears that approximately half of the possible combinations are never used. could there be an error in my testing? yes

scrolling through the test results... [ More ]

Uniform distribution of P3 numbers?

db101 — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 05:55:11 GMT

I would like to know if this method is as good as random for generating a number for Pick 3, because I think it results in a skewed distribution and some numbers being left out. Like for instance I don't think you can ever get the number 349 out of it. I mentioned this to the person who swears by this method, but they said prove it. Well I think it requires someone with a computer background so I couldn't prove my hunch. The method is : multiply together the last two results, then multiply that... [ More ]