[Q] I’ve been analysing all my past lottery results over the years and whilst I know these things are supposed to be random, there is a pattern.
Some numbers have definitely been drawn more often than others, and some have definitely appeared in the jackpot combination more than others. Should I play those numbers?
[A] You’re absolutely right.
Do you remember rolling a dice at school and charting the results? You tallied up each number as it was rolled, and then drew a little bar graph of the results. And the graph made pretty much a straight line proving that all the numbers had the same chance of being rolled.
Or did it?
Actually your graph was pretty wonky – oh yes it was! But don’t take offense, I’m sure you drew yours just as well as I did 
. But all of our graphs were actually pretty wonky, and wonky in different ways too. If we took all our results together and drew another graph then we’d have one that was smoother, but still not perfectly straight.
We all get caught up in what we think we learned about ‘averages’.
But the fact is if you take any set of past results from any lottery for any period in time, you will find the same thing. Some results appear more or less often than others – a wonky graph. And that’s because this is exactly the sort of result that is entirely normal for a random process. If it were not possible for this to happen then the results would not be random.
With randomness if you actually repeat the ‘test’ enough times then every possible set of results would happen. Not just every result, but every different wonky graph for each set of results you pull out. So everything from never winning a single thing on the lottery, to hitting the jackpot every single draw for your whole life!
This is how random works. Just because the current state of play is ‘less likely than the true average’ does not mean there is anything unusual going on.
The weak point in the chain here is actually our brains – they love to see patterns in randomness. That’s the nature of our brains, we just can’t help trying to make a nice comfortable order out of things. And when it happens to be numbers we’re trying to make order of we’re even worse than ever!
So the real question here is not which numbers to play as a result of all this analysis, but whether the past results have anything useful to reveal to us in the first place. And the fact is, they don’t.
Lottery Guy is 100% right. The chance of drawing 1,2,3,4,5,6 is just as random as drawing say 8, 11, 17, 26, 29, 43. Reason being is that it does not rely on the previous draws since it is completely random. Take coin tossing for example. Of course it is not 50/50 out of 10 times tossed. Sometimes I will get 2 head and 8 tails, 6 heads and 4 tails, etc.
Well that makes sense. Thanks. I thought it was interesting and couldn’t toss it until I found out the reason or chance of it. But, now I know.
I bought a mega millions QUICK PICK in arizona, the numbers were as follows, in this order. 21 22 23 24 25 mega plier 26
What are the odds of a computer doing that number sequence?
Well believe it or not, the odds are exactly the same as the computer spitting out any other combination!
Or in other words 1 in 175,711,536. Which is also the odds of winning Mega Millions of course. (Because the quick pick machine is really just doing it’s own mini lottery draw to produce your ticket).
You see, it’s only us humans who place any significance in numbers being in sequential order (or multiples of another number, or all evens or odds etc etc). To a computer, they’re just different symbols. They could just as well be shapes, or colors.
It looks and feels really significant, but mathematically it really isn’t. Weird huh.
Thanks for the info. Like I said to Mr. 11 I was curious enough about the odds or lack there of, to toss it until I knew. Just a “point to ponder” I suppose. Thanks for the feedback!