|
THE LOTTERY WORKS |
LOTTERY ODDS, Numerology and The UK National Lottery |
|
The UK National Lottery is
a lottery with balls numbered 1 to 49 inclusive. To win you must correctly
choose 6 numbers in any order. A given number can only be chosen once per
try. The draws are held on Wednesdays and Saturdays of each week. Each
entry costs £1. After expenses, commission and donations to "Good
Causes" the rest goes into a "Pool Fund." The First Draw
took place on Saturday 19th November 1994. The first Wednesday draw took
place on 5th February 1997 |
|
|
|
It
depends on the Pool Fund available for that draw and the numbers you have
correctly chosen: 3
numbers correct (odds of getting this are 1:57)
pays £10 guaranteed. 5 nos.
correct, plus the bonus ball (7th ball drawn) (odds
of 1:2,330,636). The
"Jackpot" means 6 out of 6 correct selections (odds of 1:13,983,816) pays £1
million to £15 million (52% of Pool Fund). The average current amount is
£2 million. The
Maths Explained
In
order to correctly get all 6 numbers you have to pick the first number
right AND the second number right AND the third number right, etc., This
means the first number has a 1/49th chance of appearing.
The second, a 1/48th, the third a 1/47th etc. To
work out your odds you would multiply each of these fractions together: 1/49 × 1/48
× 1/47 × 1/46 × 1/45
× 1/44 = 1/10,068,347,520 So,
at this point, your odds of winning are 1 in 10,068,347,520. But, you can
choose your winning numbers in any order. Consequently, your chances of
winning are better than this. Your chance gets better by the number of
different ways that a sequence of 6 numbers can be written down, which for
6 numbers is 6 factorial. Factorial means, the
number resulting from multiplying a whole number by every whole number
between itself and 1 inclusive. 6 factorial, or 6!, therefore, is 6 x
5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1. The result is 720. Divide 10068347520 by 720 to get 13,983,816. Lets say 14
million to 1. Or lets say, if you spend £1 a week on the UK National Lottery, you may
win the jackpot in 270,000 years time. ODDS
IN PERSPECTIVE
THE
ODDS OF: a
meteor landing on your house: 182,138,880,000,000 to 1 winning
the EuroMillions lottery jackpot are 76 million to one contracting
the human version of mad cow disease: 1 in 40,000,000 being
struck by lightning are about a 1 in 2,000,000 chance getting
a royal flush in poker on first five cards dealt: 649,740 to 1 a
pregnant woman has a 1 in 705,000 chance of giving birth to quadruplets someone
eating an oyster finding a pearl inside of it - 1 in 12,000 getting
haemorrhoids: 25 to 1 The
Best Numbers To Select? If a number has been drawn previously, does that make it more or less likely to be drawn next time? Well, if you toss a coin repeatedly and it comes down "Heads" 50 times in a row, the next flip still gives only a 50% chance of getting a "Tail". But, over a long period of time, you might expect the variations to get less. Statistically speaking, any six numbers are as LIKELY to occur as any six others. So, choosing any six numbers is as "likely" as any others! Therefore, your criterion could be to choose numbers that others DON'T choose, so that when you DO win, you win more money. DO stick with your numbers if you're happy with them. If you aren't, consider choosing less popular ones, to increase your potential winnings. Avoid for example these possible popular selections:
In
other words, avoid any systematic choices. Too many other players usually
think along the same lines, and some therefore may copy your selection.
For example, many players choose numbers based on family birth dates, and
so numbers 1 to 31 are selected more often. The law of averages The law
of averages is a lay term. It’s generally used to express the view that
eventually, everything "evens out." For example: The more
children you have, the more likely there will be an equal division of boys
and girls. The longer you flip a coin, the more likely the number of heads
and tails will be the same. The more times lottery balls are drawn, the
more likely they will all be drawn the same number of times. If a
particular lottery ball has NOT been drawn, it is more likely to be drawn
in future. So,
every outcome in a fair game exhibits identical probabilities equal to the
underlying probability of the game. The formal mathematical theory that supports the law of averages is called “the law of large numbers.” It states that a large sample of a particular probable event will tend to reflect the underlying probabilities. For example, after tossing a coin 1000 times, we would expect the result to be approximately 500 heads, because this would reflect the underlying 50% chance of a heads for any given flip. |
|
However,
while the average will move closer to the underlying probability, in
absolute terms deviation from the expected value will increase. For
example, after 1000 coin flips, we might see say 530 heads. After 10,000
flips, we might get 5080 heads. The average has now moved closer to the
underlying 50%, from .30 to .5080. However, the absolute deviation from
the expected number of heads in real terms has gone up from 30 to 80. The
term, "law of large numbers" was possibly introduced by Siméon-Denis Poisson (1781 to 1840) a French
mathematician, geometer, and physicist, in 1835, as he discussed an
earlier version of it put forward by a James Bernoulli (1654 – 1705) It is
important to understand that no outcome in a fair game is at any point, in
any way whatsoever, affected by any other past or future outcome within
the game. This
can be illustrated in something referred to as “The gambler's fallacy”
This is the mistaken belief that past events will affect future events
when dealing with random activities. It usually involves some of the
following misconceptions: A
random event is more/less likely to occur because it has not happened for
a long time; A
random event is more/les likely to occur because it recently happened; These
are common misunderstandings that arise in everyday reasoning about
probabilities. Many people lose money while gambling due to their belief
in this fallacy. The
chances of something happening the next time are not necessarily related
to what has already happened before. It is just the chance of it
occurring again, based on the underlying probability, of whatever is being
observed. The
only way to increase your chances of winning the lottery, is possibly, to buy more
tickets or participate in a syndicate with mathematically chosen lines ! |