The Lottery

[BlackMason]

I'm currently half heartedly working on a "theory" that the lottery is not random as most people think. Data is available but not in the time frames that would make my research easier. What I mean is that there is a website that tracks the frequency of a number through a 12 month period. The next time frame is 10 years! I'm expecting certain numbers to have lower frequencies over a long enough time period. The idea is that if the lottery is random then the numbers would have a similar frequency distribution.

Why do I think the lottery is not random? Because casino slot machines and similar equipment is rigged. The lottery is gambling. The way the lottery works is by playing on the hopes and greed of individuals by promising life changing money. Therefore I believe there has to be a way for the lottery operators to prevent too many people winning the jackpot. If too many people win the jackpot then they will have to split the prize money. This has the effect of making the lottery lose it's lustre. No other gambling system has life changing jackpots like the big L.

I'm not a scientist so I need help especially with interpreting data. Any statisticians out here? The first step, making an observation, is really difficult. For non-professionals at least. Actually for me. Anyone got any insight or input?

So far I've seen that certain numbers fail to come out while others come out every time. This is in an 11 month period. Others have abysmal records failing to obtain in 7 months like the number 20. The best numbers are 28, 32 and 45. They came out all the time in the 11 month period. 1, 16, 34 and 48 failed only once.

This is based on the South African lottery pick 6 between 1 and 49.

[BlackMason]

Ok so now I've got 9 year data for the lottery showing the frequency of the numbers in that time. I now need something that is known to be random with enough data for 9 years that is similar to the lottery. Any ideas?

[Heywood]

I doubt it is rigged. It is possible that there may be some bias in the generation of randomness though...and you might be able to exploit that. But I highly doubt it as the information to determine if there is an exploitable bias is relatively easy to come by. Someone would have beat you too it. Actually....lots of people would have beat you too it.

What you should do instead is learn how to compute the expected value of a gambling transaction. When my son turned 18 he and I made a simple spreadsheet. In the spread sheet we would key in information about scratch tickets and claimed prized from the states website and use it to compute the actual value of a scratch ticket. The best scratch tickets that cost a dollar were worth 67 cents. These were from games in which a lot of tickets were sold but few or none of the big prizes had yet been claimed.

[Jackalope]

What you should do instead is learn how to compute the expected value of a gambling transaction. When my son turned 18 he and I made a simple spreadsheet. In the spread sheet we would key in information about scratch tickets and claimed prized from the states website and use it to compute the actual value of a scratch ticket. The best scratch tickets that cost a dollar were worth 67 cents. These were from games in which a lot of tickets were sold but few or none of the big prizes had yet been claimed.

Yep - the EV of lottery games is terrible. You can play blackjack very, very badly before you approach the negative-EV of scratch tickets or the weekly draw.

[JesusHChrist]

From my programming days, I remember true randomness being difficult to come by. The random number generator calls would create a sequence of numbers random to themselves, but given a certain "seed" the sequence would repeat. It was pseudo-randomness.

I suppose you could extract randomness from white noise. Even then, if you used the same white noise sample, the sequence would repeat. Maybe there are more sophisticated approaches than when I was coding.

But that being said, I do think all games of chance are rigged in the sense the House controls the odds. After that, with enough players, what other rigging needs to be done? You set the odds to payout 30 cents on the dollar (or really anything in your favor) and get a nice fat income stream over time.

Playing the lottery is like burning money without the satisfaction of seeing the money burn.

[Heywood]

What you should do instead is learn how to compute the expected value of a gambling transaction. When my son turned 18 he and I made a simple spreadsheet. In the spread sheet we would key in information about scratch tickets and claimed prized from the states website and use it to compute the actual value of a scratch ticket. The best scratch tickets that cost a dollar were worth 67 cents. These were from games in which a lot of tickets were sold but few or none of the big prizes had yet been claimed.

Yep - the EV of lottery games is terrible. You can play blackjack very, very badly before you approach the negative-EV of scratch tickets or the weekly draw.

Massachusetts had a lottery game that would occasionally have a positive expected value. It was called Cash Windfall. The game was pulled when word got out.

[Angrboda]

Playing the lottery is like burning money without the satisfaction of seeing the money burn.

I don't play the lottery but I have great fun fantasizing about what I would do with all that money if I won. Cheapest seat in the house.

[robvalue]

Hmm... Well, if the balls are not all equally likely, that would suggest some bias in either the selection process or the physical nature of the balls themselves. For example, if one ball was heavier than the others, you would probably see it come up more often.

However, you first have to determine whether the variance you see in the data compared an expected probability distribution is significant. That could be done, I imagine it must have been done somewhere. For example, if I throw a coin 100 times and get 60 heads, is that significant evidence that the coin is biased? There are statistical methods for testing this (often using the normal distribution as an approximation to other distributions, in this case binomial).

If the difference is actually significant (which depends on your chosen level of significance, there are two types of error that can occur and which cannot be eliminated, only minimised) then you could build a model based on the data you have.

I would highly doubt the differences are significant, although I've not looked up any studies. It would suggest a big problem with the equipment, which I presume they would have already addressed.

Like most gambling games based only on chance, there is no system. In the case of the lottery, all you can do is try and pick a combination which the least number of other people are likely to pick; so if you win, you share the jackpot with the least number of people.

Maths.

---

Sorry if I cocked any of that up, not done this stuff for a while

[Heywood]

Playing the lottery is like burning money without the satisfaction of seeing the money burn.

I don't play the lottery but I have great fun fantasizing about what I would do with all that money if I won. Cheapest seat in the house.

I have made a fair amount of money gambling. Its not easy. A gambler who make money over the long run has to find and then evaluate lots and lots of bets. Most of the time the bets will yield a negative expectation so you pass on them. A few are found to have a positive expectation and these bets are booked. Then, even if you make good decisions, there are the swings. There is always a risk of ruin(which can be managed but not eliminated).

I know quite well how bad a typical lotto bet is. Still I play it because a $1 has very little utility to me. $150 million would give me a lot of utility. In terms of dollars the bet is horrible. In terms of utility....I'm not so sure.

[robvalue]

Are you saying you have a system for playing the lottery? Or which games do you refer to?

I claim that games such as roulette have no system. You lose over time, the end.

---

I read in derren Brown's book he thought he had a roulette system and needed a mathematician to prove it. Bollocks.