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Setting aside idea of playing a lottery, if you insist on playing it at least do it properly. Don't choose any pattern of numbers as you are exposing yourself t
by lmilcin 6y ago
Setting aside idea of playing a lottery, if you insist on playing it at least do it properly. Don't choose any pattern of numbers as you are exposing yourself to having to share the win with other people. Don't choose a date as it is more probable somebody will also chose a valid date than a completely random set of numbers. Don't choose digits from your favorite irrational number, for the same reason.
Ideally, choose numbers that no other person is likely to choose. Not exactly random. Maybe generate a random sequence and check if you can see a pattern, do a search on the Internet, etc.
- Fellshard 6y agoBetter to win a partial pot than none at all, yes?
- appleflaxen 6y agoyes, but that's not the right framing of the problem. if all outcomes are equally likely from the machine, but humans are more likely to choose numbers with personal significance. Therefore more tickets will be sold with 1-31 in them vs. higher numbers, and the expected value of your ticket will therefore be higher if you include numbers above them.
- laverya 6y agoBut if two numbers have an equal chance of being drawn, it's better to choose a pot you won't have to share.
- jessriedel 6y agoBut the suggestion in the article, reasonable in my opinion, is that this sequence was in fact favored for some nefarious reason.
- ldjb 6y agoThe drawing of these numbers is under question, but you would expect a significant proportion of players to select sequences such as this, even if it's not in their best interests to do so.
- Skunkleton 6y agoRight, which IMO makes it less likely that someone is cheating. If you are going to cheat, why share?
- smabie 6y agoyou have to share. A single person couldn't pull this off. A bunch of lottery officials got together and picked these numbers. They had to pick an obvious sequence, because it would not be credible for 20 people to pick a non-obvious sequence. That's just my theory, of course.
- MauranKilom 6y agoBut why would they choose this incredibly specific set of numbers? If you can influence the draw, why influence it in the only way that riles up every human looking at the result? Why not just have it pick something that looks random?
- lmilcin 6y agoAny combination of numbers has the same probability of showing up in a fair lottery. Why would you choose something like 1 2 3 4 5... that has basically same chance of happening but almost guarantees you will have to share the pot with a bunch of other people?
- rfonseca 6y agoThis all makes sense, except for "Don't choose digits from your favorite irrational number"... You can choose whatever combination of numbers you want, and find it in your favorite irrational number if you search long enough :)
- moonchild 6y agoNot necessarily. It depends on the combination of numbers (and the irrational number).
- kosievdmerwe 6y agoIndeed not every irrational number has this property, for instance you could create an irrational number using only the digits 1 and 2, but some irrational numbers do have this property. Until I did some research a few minutes ago, I thought this property was the irrational number being a "normal number"; however, that is not the case. That all said, a Normal number definitely has this property and I don't think having this property implies normality, but I don't know either way. An interesting fact though is that almost all real numbers are normal, which means pretty much every irrational number has this property, though not every irrational number. However, we still don't know if pi, e or square root 2 are normal.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> I don't think having this property implies normality, but I don't know either way. Having this property cannot imply normality. Imagine an irrational number z which has this property, and another number z' constructed from z by taking the first 1 digit of z, appending 1 "2", appending the first 2 digits of z, appending 2 "2"s, appending the first 3 digits of z, appending 3 "2"s, and so on. Using e as an example, our z' would begin 2.7 2 71 22 718 222 7182 2222 71828 22222... z' is irrational and shares the property that every sequence of digits can be found in its decimal expansion. But it is obviously not normal; over half of its digits are "2".
- 6y ago
- dzhiurgis 6y agoChoose higher numbers as people tend to choose low ones Also there's sites for picking numbers that others didn't but you still share the pot.
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoWhat - so I choose 1,2,3,4,5 and you choose 6,7,8,9,10 and this we both double our chances for half the pot ? I can imagine that just leads to a lot of litigation
- londons_explore 6y agoExample: https://www.uk-lotterysyndicate.com/ https://www.uk-lotterysyndicate.com/
- learnstats2 6y ago> Don't choose any pattern of numbers ...unless that pattern of numbers wins...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Skunkleton 6y agoYou mean all this time I should have been picking the winning numbers? Why didn't I think of that?
- Wistar 6y agoRegardless of how you choose your number sequence, buy two of the same sequence. If it's a split, you get twice the share.
- progval 6y agoNo, you don't. If it's a split with one other person, you get 2/3 instead of 1/2, that's only 33% more. If it's a split with two other people, that's 2/4 instead of 1/3, which is only 50% more. etc. and always less than twice as much. And in all the other cases where it's not a split (either you lose or you win alone), you paid twice as much.
- lmilcin 6y agoFrom the point of view of your investment (ie. a single ticket) you are guaranteed you will have to split (with the other ticket). You would do much better by buying two tickets with independent sequences, which is going to double your chance of winning.
- smabie 6y agoThis really lowers your expected value by a lot What you describe is very very far from the optimal strategy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y agoFunnily, my math teacher always said that if she would play the lottery, she would just play the number 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. as nobody plays them and they have equal chances of being picked. I guess she was wrong.
- lopmotr 6y agoHow can a math teacher make such an obvious mistake? She's right it's picked less often than all other sequences combined, but that's not the same as being picked less often than every other sequence individually. Best lottery advice I heard from a math teacher was only make bets that have a chance at a retire-early sized prize and preferably no chance of small winnings. The idea being that when he loses, he's donating to charity, which he would have done anyway.
- listenallyall 6y agoWait what? Would have donated to charity anyway... except he didn't donate to any charity, he played the lottery instead.
- shaftway 6y agoIn most of the US lottery proceeds go to schools. Not sure about other areas. Of course, the fallacy here is that dollars in budgets are fungible, and when lotteries are established municipalities often redirect the same number of dollars away from the schools into whatever pork barrel projects they like. That way you have your cake (technically the lottery money does fund schools) and can eat it too (in reality it funds other stuff under the table). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA&t=650 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA&t=650
- listenallyall 6y ago> In most of the US lottery proceeds go to schools. I'm well aware. A government-run school system, however, is NOT a charity. And it's an enormously inefficient way to contribute to a cause -- more than half of the teacher's "donation" is kept by the lottery (distributed as prizes, vendor fees, admin costs) Nor does much of the money actually impact kids. Most lottery-based education funding in the US is either misleading, or simply replacing (rather than adding to) other funding sources. For example, in New York: https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/education/how-much-lottery-money-really-goes-to-education/71-607297164 https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/education/how-much-lottery... “People think the money is going strictly for education, like for books, or schools, or to pay teacher salaries, but it’s not,” DiPietro told 2 On Your Side. According to DiPietro, the money on occasion has been “pinched off” by the state, to pay for a variety of items, including attorney’s fees for construction projects and even to pave roads near schools. “They could say there are school busses that are going to drive on this road so the spending would be ‘education based’ when it’s really not, to me that’s a stretch,” he said.
- tartoran 6y agoThis is the reason why, rarely when I play, I avoid the quickpick and struggle to pick random numbers on the spot. They usually are in increasing order so I am aware I am a bad random number picker. Still, I’d rather share some win than nothing, so in the end it doesn’t make much of a difference
- MaximumYComb 6y agoQuick picks are quite random and, from my experience, I'd argue that over 2/3rds would be different from how humans pick numbers.
- tartoran 6y agoYou might be right, but until i see the algorithm they use I’ll continue to have my own reservations. Their incentive to issue similar numbers and if not hit, the chances to increase the jackpot make a whole lot more people pour money into the game. The house always wins regardless of what numbers come out but if jackpot goes up the pool grows exponentially and so does their profit
- MaximumYComb 6y agoAlso,instead of buying $10 in a weekly lotto every week, you save your money and wait for it to cross a threshold of value and then buy using the saved money. 50 entries into a $70 million lotto is better than 1 entry, 50 times onto an average lotto of $2 million. The expected payout of vastly bigger. I've done the math on my local lotteries and I only buy tickets when the EV of the return is greater than the cost of a single ticket. Even then it's only a small amount of tickets. The odds may be in my favour but they're still really small to win.
- xuki 6y ago> EV of the return is greater than the cost of a single ticket. Wait, if your math is correct, why don't you bet the house on this? With a large enough purchase you're guaranteed to make more money than you spend.
- MaximumYComb 6y agoBecause I don't have the $50 million laying around to do it. The EV is only in my favour when I factor in the small prizes PLUS odds of main jackpot / value of main jackpot.
- indecisive_user 6y agoIt doesn't take into account splitting the jackpot. Maybe the expected value is positive if you're the sole winner, but not when 3 other people picked the same numbers as you.
- hnlmorg 6y agoThe thing is, his maths isn't correct. Once upon a time some lottery jackpots would occasionally exceed the cost of buying every ticket. But then crime rings cottoned on to that and bought thousands of tickets. Now lotteries take that probability into account and cap the highest rollover amount. Some even have schemes where if there isn't a winning ticket the prize jackpot trickles down to the next highest tickets -- which is a great way to sell massively more tickets and keep the jackpot low enough that it doesn't exceed the ticket price.
- 6y ago
- sgustard 6y agoThere's a fallacy in here somewhere. Let's say you pick a common sequence, and you win but have to share the winnings with several people. You say "Darn, I should have picked different numbers!" But then you would have won nothing.
- tempestn 6y agoBefore the draw every set of numbers has the same probability of coming up. Your expected win differs on the uniqueness of the numbers you choose though, so you might as well choose unique ones. Yes, of course you can say ex post that you should have picked the numbers that won, but that's not really useful.
- hnlmorg 6y agoYour comment implies you know which numbers are likely to be drawn, which you don't. When every number has an equal chance of being drawn and you don't know what is going to be drawn, it makes more sense to pick numbers that are less popular and thus you're less likely to share the winnings.