Lottery for Dummies

I have been hearing all kinds of theories on increasing someone’s odds of winning a lottery ticket. I couldn’t bear hearing all the nonsense and stay quite. So I decided to share with you this “contrary to popular belief” type of post.

This first one is a classic, I heard it from all kinds of people..

“I always pick the same lottery numbers, I figured since I haven’t been winning lately, I’m sure that my numbers are going to win soon”

Actually, the winning numbers are always recycled. Every combination of numbers has an equal chance of winning, in every single draw. It’s like having 3 coloured balls in a bag (blue, red, yellow) and a ball is randomly pulled out of the bag. Every ball has an equal chance of being pulled out. Since after a ball is drawn out, it is put back into the bag, the probability of picking any of the balls a second time is unchanged. Lottery numbers are the same, numbers are always put back to be used in the next draw.

In fact, this week’s winning numbers have the same chance of coming up the next week, and the week after that, and so on.

So don’t be afraid to change your usual number, since you’re always going to have the same probability.

I also heard this one a lot..
“I was so close to winning this week. I had an 11 instead of the 10 and 29 instead of the 30”

A person who’s had an 11 instead of a 10 is as close to winning as a person who had a 39 instead of an 11. For the same reason explained above, every number has an equal chance of getting picked.

Normally when I buy a lottery ticket I just get a quick pick number (the computer picks the numbers randomly) But on certain occasions I like to see the salesman’s reaction when I pick 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6 as my six numbers.

Sometimes they smirk at the oddness of my pick, other times they comment saying “you must be feeling really lucky!” But the truth of the matter is, my six numbers are just as good is anybody’s favourite set, or as the randomly generated ones.

The bottom line is, there’s no way to predict a winning number, or to increase your chances of winning (using only one ticket). Sadly, the chance of winning 6/49 (picking 6 numbers from a pool of 49) is one in fourteen million.

Even after knowing the slim chances, I can’t help it sometimes but buy a ticket and start daydreaming about all the things I would buy :)

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