Quote: Originally posted by yoho on Jan 27, 2013
To address some of the questions you guys arised:
#1:
If you flipped a coin, and it returned heads, would you say the coin is biased? It's 100% heads! What if you flipped it two times and they both returned heads? 3?
What you said is absolutely valid, and you may assume that if you wish. But if you had knowledge that the coin was at least intended to be made as fair as possible,
like the weight on each side is exactly the same, and the flip is completely randomized etc, then at what point does that assumption hold its reasonableness?
1 throw? 2 throws? 10 throws? 100 throws?
Actually there is statistics theories that deal with this, but it is, I believe, slightly higher level of mathematics than most can handle. But the basic idea, is that obviously
the more trials you had, the more accurate your predictions. But as I said, for lotteries with tens of millions of possibilities, a few hundred trials is not nearly enough.
#2, #3:
You misinterpreted my point. I'm not telling you to go blow all your money on a single lottery. I even pointed out that it would probably bring more sadness than
if you rationed it out. I'm simply saying that if you wanted to maximize your chances for winning the lottery ONCE, playing it at one time would be the most
optimal way. As soon as you buy tickets the second time, you're not playing optimally (again, assuming you don't care for winning the jackpot multiple times).
This is not to say that its the most optimal choice for EVERY SITUATION/CONSIDERATION. Indeed, I also mentioned that you cannot beat the lottery, and that no
matter how you play, the total expected outcome is the same.
Furthermore, I pointed out that you should only spend what you can afford on the lottery, so I don't think I'm telling people to mismanage money.
If you really asked me for a "system", I'd tell you to save your money for the occasional draw that you'll be happy with.
For example, if you had determined that you wanted to spend 5 bucks on the lottery per week, instead of spending it every week, save it up until you see a draw
you like. Let's say you think a 15 million jackpot would set you for life. Then perhaps enter when the jackpot is 30 million, so that even if you share with 1 other
person you can still get a satisfactory amount. This way you're ever so slightly more optimized to win, but you aren't completely blowing it all in one shot.
In addition you're learning to save money to boot. NEVER NEVER NEVER "borrow money used for future draws; i.e don't overspend. Ever.
In the end, I'm trying to tell you that there is no system that will allow you to win, clearly you didn't even read what I wrote if you're asking me for my winning
tickets.
So that addressed most of the concerns.
In regards to coin's most recent point, there's not much I can say. I'm not a psychic, I have no idea what other players/quick picks choose for their numbers.
Is 1 2 3 4 5 6 used more or less? I'm not sure. I don't think many people would want to play that, but it does make more sense it's played more than a completely
random sequence. Did you read that article on wikipedia where the second prize for some lottery was won like 200 times because the numbers appeared on a
future cookie? I simply cannot guess what others would play, and I can do nothing to influence it. I only know that even if I knew some others would share the
jackpot with me, that I'd rather share it than win nothing at all.