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I've known people who's brains overheat when i tell them that when choosing a lotery ticket number,

if you choose the same number that came out the week before you have the same chances of winning as with any other number. also, weird numbers like 123456, also have the same chance of appearing. certain people cannot accept that.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
The UK's "own" National Lottery (owned and run by a company called Camelot, actually a Canadian teachers' union, not British owned at all), encouraged charlatans to advertise ways to increase your chance of winning. They didn't last long. Even if they managed to stay on the right side of the advertising laws, their promise was totally empty!

Yet you'd still hear people waffling about their own "foolproof" methods - same numbers, only even numbers, sequences, etc. - that will net the jackpot... one day.

Perhaps were encouraged by the weekly draw on TV, in front of a studio audience. This was (still is?) one of the most cheap-skate, risible, meretricious, gimmicky shows going - and one of its worst habits was emphasising the frequency of some number that happened to have been drawn in each of the preceding two or three weeks.

'

I used to buy a ticket each week, at 6-from-49 numbers and £1 stake. I won a few £10s, or rather, I won [£10 payout - £1 stake] so £9. Once, I won £44 ("45"). Never anywhere near the jackpot at odds of about 13 000 000 to 1.

I gave up when Camelot doubled the stake to £2.... and added a number so now the draw is of 6-from-50, vastly decreasing the chances.

I think going from 49 to 50, multiplies the odds against you by 50, (from 13 to 650 million to 1 against) because probability works by factorials, but I don't know the formula so could be wrong.

.

There is a serious point though.

You don't need know the formulae but if you cannot see or accept simply the effects of Laws of Probability, and of Percentages, you are far more likely to become the victim of badly-or willfully- mis-reported statistics and numbers, spurious advertising claims, on-line gambling companies and downright fraud.
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@ArishMell the odds are 6/50 * 6/49 * 6/48... and so on.

and yes, the important point is that it’s [i]multiplicative[/i]

I have told people that 1-2-3-4-5-6 is just as likely as any other six-number combination, but have always been met with rejection.

I have also told people that rather than play weekly, they should keep the cash to one side for a year, and then buy 52 tickets at once... thereby increasing their chance of winning.

The response is usually that if they had that much cash in their hand they probably wouldn’t spend it on gambling.

I advise them to think about that
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@newjaninev2 Thank you for giving the formula: I knew it is factorial (6/50! where the '!' is the arithmetical operator, not punctuation), but not the full rule.

Inverting so you obtain the whole-number odds [ (50!/6) to 1 ] against, not the miniscule fraction for, shows the low chance of winning even more starkly.

Strange, their reasoning about that saved 52 stakes (£104 in Britain) like a little personal Thrift-Club for Christmas. It appears their way to justify to themselves, gambling they know they should avoid completely.

Some people do indeed put away the stake each week, and once a year tell themselves the Lottery has "won" them £104 (or equivalent in other countries). Indeed, a full win, not claim-minus-stakes!

..

I did think I'd won the lot one morning, when a paper I bought more or less only for the results gave 3 matches (£10 claim), then 4 (perhaps £40)... then 5. OO-er. Thousands. [i]Then 6[/i]. I felt a bit faint, got a grip, decided I should calmly and discreetly ask the newsagent from whom I bought the ticket, to verify it......

Only now did I notice I was reading the previous results slip, which at first glance resembles the ticket. Oh! ("Oh" factorial?).

Nothing for it but to pick up my sandwich box and go to work as usual.
Best way to deal with a random number is with a random number. Lotteries are a tax for people that are bad at math.
reflectingmonkey · 51-55, M
@room101 in a way this system equates to savings. it takes discipline to save 20$ or 100$ a week and not go back 2 days later and spend it, maybe its easier for some people to put a 20 in a hat every week and then once in a while "win" the content of the hat.
room101 · 51-55, M
@reflectingmonkey It was. I remember my parents budgeting for when their windfall would arrive. Of course, unlike a lottery, the windfall did arrive lol.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@BlueSkyKing Well, hardly a "tax".

You have to pay taxes.

You do not have to gamble!

I've just noticed I should have worded my opening sentence above a bit more clearly. It was not the Lottery company that encouraged false claims to predict the results, of course, but the existence of the Lottery - and the gullibility of those ticket-buyers who cannot understand the game's random nature. You don't need be a mathematician to know the odds are stacked extremely high against you, and that tricks like regular numbers will never work.
dancingtongue · 80-89, M
I know you are right, but I still had a hard time with the laws of probability. It is where I hit the wall in mathematics.
Sometimes I feel like I should never play again! I always let the machine
Pick my numbers
MonaReeves86 · 36-40, F
Did you win?

 
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