Lottery Guy

The Lottery Number Frequency Myth

November 4th, 2009   ·   Read 3 Comments...

lottery frequency[Q] Should I play lottery numbers that have a higher frequency of being drawn?

[A] There are lots of interesting things you can do with old lottery results. You can apply all sorts of analysis on past results, and come up with lots of intriguing things.

Even the lottery companies do it themselves. Many official lottery sites have things like lottery frequency checker tools on them, so you can see how often each ball has been drawn.

But the problem with this kind of analysis, is that it’s entirely useless in predicting what’s going to happen next.

Here’s why…

Lottery Randomness Looks Weird

I know this sounds a bit Douglas Adams but the big problem with randomness is that it can often look so very unrandom.

For something to be truly random, all results have to be possible.

So for there to be any significance in some numbers appearing more often than others, there must by definition be something wrong with the draw process. In others words it isn’t random.

Yes, that’s theoretically possible – but bear in mind lottery companies put an awful lot of effort into ensuring their draws are random.

By all means fire up your Excel spreadsheet, plug in all the past results, and make charts of hit frequency. If you find that kind of stuff fun.

(No offence intended – I’m a maths and probability geek!)

But please don’t be fooled into thinking this kind of analysis will increase your chances of winning the lottery.

It won’t do your chances of winning any harm to play this way, it just won’t improve them any either.

For more help with winning and real stuff you can do to improve your odds, get my free lottery tips course.

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Categories: Lottery Questions · Lottery Tips · Picking Lottery Numbers

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