From the article

University of Central Oklahoma mathematician Larry Lucas says that on any given day, the odds of choosing the correct three numbers in the order drawn is one in 1,000. Those who select the numbers in order get a cash prize of $500.

  That takes a mathematician ???

  Wonder if they could find the odds in pick 4 ??? 

ez

Of course people beat odds like this every time they win the lottery.

If you analzye this situation, you see that there is a 50% chance of this occurring every 693,147 drawings.  If 30 states (it may be more) have pick 3, one would expect to see this event with a 50% every 47 years.

The laws of probability however predict that it could happen again tomorrow.  Just because an event is improbable, does not mean it cannot occur.

In fact, one of the most improbable events is being born.  Ignoring the probability that one's parents would meet and fall on love, every human being has beat odds of 1 in 70 trillion (roughly) to have been born at all.

Then, what would be the odds of two given states, Illinois and Iowa, to have the same Midday pick-4 numbers on a given day, in the exactly same order?

By the same math as in the article, the odds would be 1 in 100,000,000 (10,000 x 10,000).

While looking at the prediction winners page the other day, I found that the odds of 1 in 100M were actually beaten by one of LP platinum members, Bluegrass, on Monday, December 12, 2005.  Congrats to Bluegrass!

(If anyone wants to see it, please click the following)

https://www.lotterypost.com/predictions-winners.asp?d=12/12/2005

The odds are not a million to one for the same number to repeat in the next draw. They are still 1,000 to one.

It happens frequently...we've all seen it happen before in our own states. I remember a pick 4 number doing that several years ago in IL.

Crazy as it sounds, both are right, in a way they still are 1000 to 1 and in another way they are 1 000 000 to one, a paradox ? I don't know, but at the same time both are right.

Rick, I would think that if you predicted BEFORE the first draw that 2 in a row would come up, then it would be 1,000,000 to 1.

I have seen this happen so many times it' ridiculous.

Look at 130 and 130 last week. Mid-Day/Night MO on December 2nd 2005.

Now the chances are 1/1000 so it can happen every day or every week etc....

This does happen in one of the states pretty much every week if not at least once a month.

Didn't Cali just have a probblem with that the other night???? yeah it did but, a little different then normaly....

Random my ??**&&^ & . I'm a computer technician and I can tell you right now that's a computer glitch as we call them.

Cali. is computer all draws. It can happen with ball draws or computerized.

Glitch = Random act of unexplained events

Well just my Opinion.

Powerplayer

Powerplayer

Anonymous, I believe Illinois and Iowa share the same pick 3 and pick 4 every day. Just as Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire does.

litebets

takeitez asked:

<< That takes a mathematician ??? >>

Reporters like to lend an air of authority to their stories. If one wrote a story about sunrise they'd probably quote an astronomer saying the sun rises in the east. Of course there's also that story in the related stories box that says that some Oklahomans are baffled by pick 3. Clearly whoever wrote this story has a pretty poor grasp of simple math if they believe the odds of picking a particular number from 1000 choices is a million to one.

anonymous77 asked: 

<< Then, what would be the odds of two given states, Illinois and Iowa, to have the same Midday pick-4 numbers on a given day, in the exactly same order?  >>

It doesn't matter whether it's two states at the same time, the same state on consecutive days, or the same state on a specific date in consecutive years.  If you pick something from a pool of 10,000 choices there's a 1 in 10,000 chance that it will match the result of any other pick from an identical pool. The odds of a specific  number being drawn in any two drawings is  (Probabilty 1 X Probability 2), which for pick 3 is 1 in a million. I would hope that's what the lottery spokesman told the reporter, and the errors in the story are strictly the result of the reporter's inability to understand simple math, but the bit about testing theprocedures makes me wonder. Maybe  the claim is just a dog and pony show for the players who don't have a clue and think there's something  wrong whenthe same numbers come up,  but if the people running lotteries understand  their line of work they should expect it to happen about every 1000 drawings and accept it as a completely normal occurrence.

Litebets27, thank you for letting me know.

Frankly, though I had learned here about the Tri-state systems, I could never imagine that Illinois and Iowa would share the same pick 3/4 system. Thanks again!

Litebets is correct, Illinois and Iowa use the same results.  Those who post predictions for both Iowa and Illionois are essentially placing a "double bet" on those numbers (twice the "risk"), but if they hit, they get twice the reward.

Another thing about the IL/IA numbers is the payout. It is Illinois who draws the numbers but Iowa has higher payouts on them. $1.00 pick 3 str in IL pays $500. and in IA it pays $600. $1.00 pick 4 str in IL pays $5,000 while in IA it pays $6,000.

That's a surprise. Oklahoma has a drawing on Sunday.

It very much depends on how you look at it.  The odds of a particular set of three numbers 1-8-9 repeating twice are 1 in 1 million.  However the odds of any two numbers repeating are one in 1 thousand.

I saw the problem the first way, but I understand that the second way is probably the way the whole thing was intended.

Seen more appropriately, in the second way, there is a 50% probability that this event (2 different drawings repeating) will occur every 693 days.  This is the ratio of ln(0.5)/ln(1-1/1000)

Excellent observation!

sounds like a some sticky fingers in some sticky candy if ya know what i mean

This Happened In PA Night Draw this Year, same exact number drawn

4/7/2005 878

on the 12th 578  today (14th) 758 in minnesota also

This goes to show that anything can and will happen in the world of mathematics/gambling. About 12 years ago a couple hit the Pick 6 twice in a six month period in my county...what are the odds of that happening? At the time I'd guess about the odds were 8 million to one on the Pick Six in my State. Math wizards got any answers?

More high odds???? yesterdays mid and eve pick 4 for CT 3003?????

quads came up in one state twice in one day here a while back.i think it might've been pennsylvania in the fall of 2004...

Demonter wrote: 

<< About 12 years ago a couple hit the Pick 6 twice in a six month period in my county...what are the odds of that happening? At the time I'd guess about the odds were 8 million to one on the Pick Six in my State. .. >>

This is just like the same numbers coming up on two days, except it wasn't two days in a row. There's nothing statistically significant about the first time, because they simply had the ticket with the numbers that  happened to get picked. Somebody was going to win that draw or a subsequent draw, and in terms of probabilities it didn't matter who won because we're looking at who did win and not making a prediction about who will win. Once they did win, the odds of them winning again were exactly the same as  the odds for anybody else who bought the same number of tickets. If they bought one ticket in the intervening six months then there was a 1 in 8 million chance that they'd win again and if they bought 1000 tickets there was a 1 in 8000 chance. At the same time there were also similar chances that any of the other previous winners would win a second time.  Once again, we're now looking at what did happen rather than making predictions about what will happen. If there were already 500 previous winners (a completely arbitrary number that may or may not be close to accurate) and they were buying an average of 2 tickets per drawing then there would have been a 1 in 8000 chance for any given drawing to be won by a previous winner. Assuming weekly drawings,  over any particular 6 month period there would be about a 1 in 308 chance  that one of the 500 would be the winner in one of those drawings.  Over the intervening 12 years those winners could have bought 624,000 tickets at the rate of 2 per drawing, which would result in about a 1 in 13 chance of a repeat winner (based on the game not changing). With a lot more than 13 states offering 6 of n lotteries, it should be expected that there will be a few people who have won twice. If nobody in your state had done it your post just would have been written by somebody from the state that did have a two-time winner.

Happened in Ohio several years back. Don't remeber the details. Think it was Am and PM on sme day.  My dad had it for one. had intended to play it for both.

is this what you were talking about?

here is another draw like that.

Kansas

last time 555 came in ga was aug 16,2001

 it's time for them!!!