I asked you guys on my email list to submit some “stupid” questions about playing the lottery. You know, those (maybe) slightly embarassing questions. That you don’t want to ask in front of the whole class. 😉
This was in honor of ‘Ask A Stupid Question Day’ which originates from a bunch of teachers in the 1980’s. Students were scared to ask questions in fear of sounding stupid. So to encourage better learning, the teachers introduced stupid question day.
Because there are no stupid questions, right? Questions are how we learn stuff. And make sure we’ve understood.
So let’s get stuck in – here’s the first of those ‘stupid’ questions, with answers (obviously!):-
Would winning the lottery be fun?
It’s actually a great question. Because winning is not the same for everyone. If you play the wrong games (e.g. Pick 3 is nearly always a bad choice…) then winning can be nice, but only fun for about 5 minutes before the winnings are all spent!
Or if you’re just ‘bad with money’ even a significant win can turn into one of those ‘lottery winners loses it all’ stories we’ve all seen in the news.
But of course for most winners, yes, absolutely it’s fun. Because winning simply means freedom. Buying ‘expensive stuff’ is only a small part of it. The real fun comes from the freedom to spend your time doing what you want.
Some people travel, some do charity work, paint, take up motor racing… But some keep their day job because they enjoy it. The choice is yours.
Are any particular days of the week better for buying lottery tickets?
Another great question (you guys are good!). The day, or time of day, you buy a ticket doesn’t make any difference to your chances of winning. All that matters is beating the deadline for when ticket sales close (usually a few hours before the draw, not minutes!).
Draw days will mean longer queues at the counter. Saturday in particular, because it’s the weekend (obviously) and because more people play Saturday draws than mid-week draws. So you can save yourself some queueing time by buying tickets on less popular days. That stuff adds up. 🙂
How come there are hot and cold numbers?
This is an interesting one, because it misleads a lot of people.
Quick recap: hot lottery numbers are numbers that have been drawn more often. Cold lottery numbers are numbers that have been drawn less often. Simple. The complicated bit is ‘does this mean anything’.
They ‘exist’ because, well, that’s what happens when you randomly generate anything. If you roll a dice the numbers don’t take it in turns. Sometimes you get two or even three 6’s in a row. Sometimes you don’t. Over time it will tend to average out, but it’s the randomness that makes it vary like this.
Some people believe that a cold number means it’s now somehow ‘due’. Because of this ‘averaging out’ effect. But it doesn’t really work that way.
Think of it like this: if you haven’t got a 6 on your dice for ten rolls in a row, does that now mean 6 is more likely to come up? It may seem like it should – but why would it? There are still six sides on the dice, so what has physically changed about this dice to make 6 become ‘due’ or more likely?
It’s actually still just as likely as all the other numbers, so it may come up, or not. What happens next does not depend on what happened before.
The same thing goes for the lottery balls.
(Note: this all assumes a perfectly random dice or lottery draw, so there is also a much longer answer to this which can give you some useful lottery strategies, but it’s way too much to get into here)
Everyone wants to know how to win lotto. I just want to ask, how do you not lose on lotto?
What a question, love it. 🙂
For me, the key here is what you define as losing. Here’s a quick stupid question of my own… Do you enjoy playing the lottery? I think it’s pretty safe to say most people do, right? Or you wouldn’t play.
Playing the lottery is a hobby or interest that we all share. It’s fun, it’s entertaining. It can also be really exciting. Particularly if you make the most of it – watch the live draw with your family or friends, all marking off your numbers as the balls come out…
Where else can you get entertainment that cheaply? How then can you ever really lose at playing the lottery.
Have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, bonus number 6 ever been picked?
Not yet. 🙂
One day it will get drawn somewhere though. And when 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 do win the lottery three things will happen:-
- There will be uproar as people cry ‘fix’, ‘con’, ‘told you it was rigged’ etc etc.
- The news will explode with stories of the ‘impossible’ lottery result.
- Thousands of people will share the jackpot and get paid out a tiny win each (why? read on).
A similar thing happened when consecutive numbers won the lottery (already happened). And when the same lottery numbers won twice. Then there was the Bulgarian lottery same numbers affair. 🙂
The result 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 is of course unlikely to get drawn. But here’s the thing – every other result is also unlikely too. The only difference is that we just can’t help seeing a nice ordered pattern in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But these are just balls in a machine, they’re not really ‘numbers’ at all.
The super crazy thing is, that a ton of people actually play those numbers. Presumably for some kind of proving a point or aren’t I clever reason. But in a typical 6/49 draw quite literally thousands of people play those numbers. And what happens when they come up? The jackpot will be shared between all of those people – meaning a lousy couple of thousand each instead of millions! Don’t do it folks. 🙂
Do the lottery companies change the balls often, so that the balls are kept even more random by increasing the variables?
Potentially, yes. There are 91 countries across the world that run a lottery – some of which also have different companies for each state/province. So rules do vary a lot.
Some companies have multiple active sets of balls and even draw machines. The UK Lottery for example have a schedule of which machine and ball set will be used for each draw. For transparency they even tell you in the results which was used (e.g. “Draw machine: Merlin, Ball set: 2”).
Other companies may not be so transparent, so I recommend asking them. And push them for a proper answer.
Those sneaky lottery companies, they just don’t want you to win. 🙂
You can now read “Stupid” Lottery Questions Answered [Part 2]
Hi LG, I always thought that “hot” numbers are those that were RECENTLY drawn multiple times so that when a seldom drawn number (from a large draw history) suddenly occurs two or three times in the last (say) five draws then it is considered “hot”and conversely if a number hasn’t been drawn more than once in recent times it is considered “cold” even if the total times drawn is above the average? Which brings me to my stupid question: is there any value in selecting numbers based on the idea of convergence to the mean? i.e. picking those numbers that have occurred less than the mean on the basis that they are more likely to be drawn since they “should catch up” to the average over time?
That’s half the problem really – what is a hot number (how recent?). There’s no fixed definition. Or agreement on what you should do if a number is ‘hot’ – is it now more or less likely..! 🙂
I cover the ‘convergence to the mean’/averaging out bit in the dice example.