1 2 3 4 5 6
4 13 21 35 43 47
Can you guess which one is more likely to win the lottery? I think most of you "know" the answer - its the same. Yet how many of you would buy in with choice 1?
I'm sure most players would be more comfortable with a sequence like choice 2 rather than choice 1. Most people "know" the answer, but don't "believe" in it.
So that's my intro. For this post, I will address 3 common fallacies people tend to make here, and the only two LEGAL ways to improve your chances to win;
although I do look forward to possible methods that I may have not thought of.
Fallacy #1:
This is commonly known as the "gambler's fallacy". If you flipped a coin 9 times, and it returned heads every time, what's the probability that the next flip will
be heads?
The answer is 1/2.
Similarly, even if a number in a lottery has not appeared in the last 10 or 20 or 50 draws, it doesn't make it any less or more likely to appear the next draw. The
same can be said of "hot" numbers. Even if a number appeared every time the past 10 draws, that doesn't mean it will also appear in the next draw. There's not
much more to say about this fallacy, but it does bring us to
Fallacy #2:
It seems that a lot of people on this forum try to look for patterns from draws, and made various outrageous conclusions, for example saying that if the number
1 appears, then the number 15 will also appear or something to that effect.
This is an outrageous and silly claim. The fact is, draws don't affect each other, and drawing a certain ball will not affect the other balls. This fallacy is kind of like
the gambler's fallacy. Let's flip a coin ten times. Theoretically you'll expect that you'll get heads 5 times, and tails 5 times. But what are the chances of getting
HTHTHTHTHT or THTHTHTHTH? Actually it's 2/2^10, which is 1 in 512. Only once out of 512 tries will you get a perfectly alternating sequence of heads and
tails. Every other time you'll have at least two heads or two tails in a row. In reality, it's very likely to have 3 or 4 heads in a row, or say 7 tails out of 10 flips.
That doesn't make it more likely for you to flip tails, or to flip 4 heads in a row. It's simply statistics. With a small sample size, you're going to get some
inconsistent data, you can't really deduce anything from them. A few hundred or few thousand draws may seem like a lot, but with millions of possiblities in a
lottery draw you can't deduce anything from it. Having 1 and 15 appear multiple times together is just like having 3 or 4 heads in a row. Just because such
things happen doesn't make it more likely to happen.
Fallacy #3:
This is the point I really wanted to talk about. Some members of this forum, especially this guy called ronnie something is basically using pseudo math to
confuse others, but most importantly themselves. Honestly such obvious fallacies I'm sure many have addressed already, but seeing so many threads with
similar confusion made by ronnie and others, I felt I really should address it.
Apparently they think they can simply disregard some combinations of numbers, such as a sequence of all even numbers or all odd numbers, or all numbers
under 10 etc. Ronnie said something like 2-4-6-8-10 is less likely to appear simply because they're all even numbers.
This is simply untrue. The fact is, even numbers, odd numbers, prime numbers, pretty numbers, ugly numbers (ya, the last two aren't legit mathematical terms)
are only something humans use to to make life easier. It's like calling a group of objects that people sit on "chair". It's really completely arbitrary. There's no
significance in numbers all being even or odd by themselves.
Sure, if you're picking 6 numbers from 59, its very unlikely that all of the numbers will be under 10 (i.e 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9). That part is true. But the same can
be said of ANY set of 9 numbers, i.e 4,12,14,15,20,35,37,43,51 for example. We put significance in a sequence like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 because its useful for us
humans in every day life, but for the purpose of a lottery draw, any set of numbers are exactly the same. There's no significance in numbers being odd or even
or pretty or ugly. Like I said in the beginning, 1,2,3,4,5,6 has the same chances of winning as 4,13,21,35,43,47. Don't try to group numbers, use some pseudo
math and convince yourself wrongly that some combinations are less likely to appear than others because all the numbers are prime or start with a 1.
***
So, with the fallacies addressed, I'll present two REAL ways to actually improve your chances of winning the jackpot, other than buying more tickets, of course.
...
Well, that's enough time for excitement, it's time to break your dreams and hopes again.
What are the ways to improve your chances?
1. Don't buy the same ticket more than once. Ya. That's my advice, haha. Sounds stupid, doesn't it? But well it works. you see news of people buying the same
numbers and then winning, but really its not a good strategy. I don't understand why anyone would buy the same ticket twice, lol.
2.This point is slightly more interesting. To maximize your chances of winning a jackpot, you should spend your whole lottery allowance on a single draw. Note,
your whole LOTTERY ALLOWANCE, not all your money, lol. NEVER spend more money on the lottery than you can afford. With that said, its better if you bought
52 tickets for a single draw than if you bought 1 ticket per week for a year.
Why? Because first of all, we know the expected return is the same. The chances are always 1 in impossibly large number. However, if you buy 1 ticket per
draw, there is a small chance, however small, that you'll win the lottery twice or three times or all 52 times. Ya, I know, dream on. But that chance exists.
If you buy in a single draw, you give up the chance to win the jackpot multiple times in exchange for a slightly higher chance to win the jackpot once. So if
you're not greedy and only need to win once, then putting all your eggs in one basket might not be a horribly bad idea, although it might hurt more when you
lose, which you probably will.
Ya, so the fact is, there isn't a real mathematically sound way to really beat the system. I'm not going to pretend I'm god and that I know everything, because
really, I don't. If god or an alien or your uncle bob told you the winning numbers for next week's draw, great, congratulations. I'm only saying that if you got
your hopes up because of the kind of reasoning I mentioned above, then I'm sorry, they aren't logically sound. Perhaps there's a way to beat the system, but
the kind of thinking above will not get you there.