Seems that its a 14m to 1 shot at winning the UK Lottery (6 from 49).
How would it affect the odds if my syndicate used a 6 from 7 permutation?
I've searched the web but cant find an algorithym that I can understand... (non academic you see)
The lottery results are independently random - there is no system that is any better than selecting a luck dip. Don't be fooled by the snake oil peddled on the internet :)Originally Posted by redmonaco
Seems that its a 14m to 1 shot at winning the UK Lottery (6 from 49).
How would it affect the odds if my syndicate used a 6 from 7 permutation?
I've searched the web but cant find an algorithym that I can understand... (non academic you see
Cheers,
Simon.
You might win more, if you do win, if you have at least one number grreater than 31. Also, if you win, you might win more by having consecutive numbers. The first because people use dates for choosing the numbers. The second because folks are disinclined to think that "1,2,3,4,5,6", for example, is just as likely as any other set of six numbers.
Best wishes,
Bob
To extend my earlier mail - the lottery results are independent and identically distributed. Some of the 'systems' sold on the internet try to use the frequency of occurrence of the balls - but the lottery system is designed to give each ball an equal chance of getting drawn.
If there was some mechanism that influenced ball frequency (e.g the balls have different masses), it would be fixed by the operator much in the same way a casino would fix a dodgy roulette wheel if it always landed on a particular number.
Goodness knows what other systems claim to base themselves on - magic fairies?
Simon.
Mathematician clocking in here. :)
Each and every set of 6 numbers has the same odds of coming up for the jackpot. By using a 6 from 7 permutation set what you are doing is attempting to increase returns on non-jackpot prizes. If you get one set of three say, then you have high odds of having several tickets with three numbers that match.
However, the Lotto system is designed so that the liklihood of coming out on top is very small, otherwise the lottery would fail very quickly.
The least-cost/best odds method is to buy one ticket only and only for a roll-over.
After all, odds of 14 million to one are close enough to zero that buying multiple tickets is a waste of time.
The only way to garantee winning the jackpot is to buy every combination of numbers.
On the other hand, one pound will buy a cuppa and a big homemade cookie in my local café and that represents better value IMHO.
Jason
Puff The Magic Dragon will be offended by the words "faerie/fairies".
My g/f's daughter claims that she wins the lottery every week ...
because she does not buy a ticket :D :D
There is a higher chance that you will be seriously injured in a road accident than win the lottery jackpot ... They are both extreme chances at the extreme tail ends of the distribution ... probably in a considerably less than a "permilletile" part of the ogive.
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
but surely the odds are lowered if you can cover 7 numbers as opposed to only 6??
And yet Camelot report that "1,2,3,4,5,6" is the single most popular combination chosen, presumably because people are following your psychology and thinking no one else is choosing it.
There are three kinds of mathematicians in the world - those who can count, and those who can't. :D
I wondered about that series in particular and wondered whether it might be an exception (laziness overcomes bad reasoning about probabilities). But, I was mistaken, and stand corrected. Try a series towards the top, but not the absolute top of the range.And yet Camelot report that "1,2,3,4,5,6" is the single most popular combination chosen, presumably because people are following your psychology and thinking no one else is choosing it.
Best wishes,
Bob
Nope, not really. Each and every combination you choose has odds of winning any given jackpot of 1 in 13983816. Buy two (different) combinations and you get 2 in 13983816. Buy n different combinations and get odds of n in 13983816.
The covering of 7 numbers means you have one ticket with each combination. Where this type of syndicate works well is that for your £1 stake you get (a share in) 7 tickets so for your individual odds this means you get 7 in 13983816 for your £1; this is Good Value(tm). However, you also have to share the winnings with 6 others, meaning your returns are one seventh of what they would have been; this is Bad Value(tm).
As I suggested before, if you perm. 6 of 7 then you get multiple combinations with, say, three numbers the same so if your three numbers come up then you win how ever many shares that is.
For example, take the numbers 1 to 7 and cover them with 6 numbers, as you'd need to for the UK Lottery:
2 3 4 5 6 7 missing 1
1 3 4 5 6 7 missing 2
1 2 4 5 6 7 missing 3
1 2 3 5 6 7 missing 4
1 2 3 4 6 7 missing 5
1 2 3 4 5 7 missing 6
1 2 3 4 5 6 missing 7
Now, each selection has the odds of turning up as the jackpot of 1 in 13983816 but let us assume that the drawn numbers are: 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12 and the bonus is 13.
in your set, {1, 2, 3} turns up 4 times, so your stake of £7 has won you £40, a gain of £33, or roughly 5.7:1. Compare this with having one ticket where {1, 2, 3} turns up once, a gain of £9 or 10:1. Thus, although you increase your return you have also increased your stake and the improvement in return is negative!
When this type of approach begins to work well is where you cover many more numbers, say perm 6 of 12 but you need to remember that the whole lottery system is designed in exactly the same way as any other gambling game; the House ALWAYS wins!
I haven't yet gotten around to working out the odds of all the combinations, including bonus balls and nor have I totted up how things work for the EuroMillions lottery with it's larger number pool but, there is one 100% sure bet...the House will win!
Any and all of the "methods" and "systems" seen all over the internet and elsewhere have one major failing...they cannot work because of the way the game is designed, with uniform, uncorrelated probability distributions. ie: any combination is (theoretically at least) equally likely as any other. A couple of years back the National Lottery chaps did spot some statistical bias in the way the numbers were occurring and so the machines were modified slightly to pull everything back into uniformity, although this bias may just have been a chance happening and now the bias may fall in a different way. The main difficulty is that so many draws are needed to validate the "randomness" of the system and after a few years of the Lottery running there may have been some interesting trends popping out of the woodwork.
All of this means one thing: you will, unless you are extremely fortunate, never win the jackpot but may win some smaller prizes.
Invest your money in something else, equally risky, that gives a better overall return: buy some stocks, gold or foreign currency.
Tra
Jason
I once worked for a professional statistician/actuary who had worked for a football pools company ... he said that to using a pin was as good a method as any when trying to pick random numbers. Or you could use this http://www.random.org/integers/
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
Evening Dunk,
That's not quite true since people wielding pins tend not to pick numbers from the edge of the area to be prodded, giving an inherent bias!
Anyway, I've just done a few sums and come up with a list of the probabilities (rounded and in percent) of each prize-winning combination coming up:
6 numbers: 0.0000071%
5 numbers plus bonus: 0.0000073%
5 numbers: 0.00031%
4 numbers plus bonus: 0.00016%
4 numbers: 0.0071%
3 numbers: 0.11%
Oh, and the most likley outcome of all? No numbers at all, with a liklihood of eighty-odd percent.
The house always wins.
Save your money. ;)
I know this is an old thread but I've been pondering the odds and am having trouble understanding this part:-
The lottery is roughly 14m - 1 per ticket.
If you buy 7 random tickets (all different combinations) then odds seem to be 7/14m = just under 2m.
If you picked 7 numbers (so its like 6 from 48 instead of 49) and then permed all '6 group' combinations (7) odds = just under 2m.
This is the part I dont really get...
Would it be better to have 7 tickets entered in a 14m - 1 shot OR 1 ticket entered in a 2m - 1 shot.
I contend that although it appears that they are the same odds the 1 ticket in 2m is the better bet.
Why???
Because the 7 tickets in the '14m - 1' shot all have a '14m - 1' chance of winning. So you have 7 chances at '14m to 1'. Or to put it another way there are 14m minus7 chances of losing.
Whereas the 1 ticket in a 2m to 1 shot has a 2m to 1 chance of winning or a 2m less1 chance of losing.
Therefore the 1 ticket in the 2m lottery has a far lower number of non winning chances...
Am I right???
any math proffessors out there or where could I look. I will admit that the math would seem to say that they are even, but if they are I cant understand how
or they are just braindead lazy tossers who dont have the wit or imagination to come up with an original number sequence of their ownAnd yet Camelot report that "1,2,3,4,5,6" is the single most popular combination chosen, presumably because people are following your psychology and thinking no one else is choosing it.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
I read somewhere that if you was to have a single grain of sand and put it into a wheelie bin full of sand, The chance of picking out your single grain of sand is the same as winning the lottery.
I still play it every saturday though :?
I don't do the lottery, the lucky dip is a fix, when Big M gets one the last three numbers are almost always very close to one another. The only thing she has got out the lottery is is a Billy Bender Shirt Lifter & Lesbian Drop In centre a few doors along the road.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
Very true ... but so many people still think they WILL win the big one one day ... especially when they read their local newspapers and see that someone or some syndicate nearby was lucky ... however the odds are similar to being knocked down by a bus.
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
Which is exactly what I got from two lines last night. None out of 12 numbers. Time to save my money methinks.Evening Dunk,
That's not quite true since people wielding pins tend not to pick numbers from the edge of the area to be prodded, giving an inherent bias!
Anyway, I've just done a few sums and come up with a list of the probabilities (rounded and in percent) of each prize-winning combination coming up:
6 numbers: 0.0000071%
5 numbers plus bonus: 0.0000073%
5 numbers: 0.00031%
4 numbers plus bonus: 0.00016%
4 numbers: 0.0071%
3 numbers: 0.11%
Oh, and the most likley outcome of all? No numbers at all, with a liklihood of eighty-odd percent.
The house always wins.
Save your money. ;)
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Are you sure that buying 7 tickets reduces the odds to 2 million to 1? Each of those tickets still only has a 14 million to one chance of winning so don't you still have 7 chances at 14 million to 1?
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
The chance would be 7/14000000 (.0000005 chance).
If you bought 14000000, all with different numbers, you would win. That is, the chance would be 14000000/14000000. Of course, you would lose too, unless the pot was greater than 14000000 and you didn't share it.
Best wishes,
Bob
Another mathmo checking in. It's completely random. This week's numbers are not influenced by last week's numbers.
I do wish 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 would come out in that order one day. I would laugh at all the idiots who make shit up to account for the occurrence.
Has anyone tried putting 49 numbered ping pong balls into a bucket and pulling out six after giving the bucket a good stir? This would simulate the actual draw conditions.
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
That said, when you get the Fibonacci sequence start in consecutive weeks, you do tend to find the numbers in subsequent weeks appear in the sequence. It is an occurrence in nature - you can for instance see this displayed in the development of fern leaves and the fractal nature of seashores - and as the balls are under the influence of gravity and simple Newtonian mechanics within the tub, nature has a strong influence in which balls appear. This Fibonacci notion is used successfully in trading and has a similar tendency to occur in random number theory.
Yeah, ok, I'm just shitting you.
The odds of any six consecutive numbers being drawn are 1 in 13,983,816 :!: ... which TTBOMK is once every 134,459.76 years if there are two lottery draws per week.
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
The odds of any six consecutive numbers being drawn are 1 in 13,983,816 :!:
Cheers
dunk
I'm patient.
People win every week. And you've as much chance of doing so as they had.Very true ... but so many people still think they WILL win the big one one day ... especially when they read their local newspapers and see that someone or some syndicate nearby was lucky ... however the odds are similar to being knocked down by a bus.
If you don't play, 100% guaranteed you will not win.
I demand a Nobel prize for that !! :D
You've got to be in it, to win it! :lol:
I'd never thought of doing that.
They make a fortune out of people's miss-understanding of probability, who buy multiple tickets falsely believing it significantly improves their chance.The chance would be 7/14000000 (.0000005 chance).
If you bought 14000000, all with different numbers, you would win. That is, the chance would be 14000000/14000000. Of course, you would lose too, unless the pot was greater than 14000000 and you didn't share it.
Best wishes,
Bob
As a 'hands on' experiment, I once spent £49 on one draw getting 7 sets of 7 random sequences - the most you can do online. I 'won' £10,. ie. lost £39 !
However, I still buy one line for every draw going and do it online using their random number generator (that way you can buy multiple weeks worth in advance and don't even have to check your tickets - doesn't get much easier). I reckon this is the best value for money way as you're entered in as many draws as possible, but with the minimum investment.
After all, someone's got to win. And that Urwerk won't buy itself !
They make a fortune out of people's miss-understanding of probability, who buy multiple tickets falsely believing it significantly improves their chance.The chance would be 7/14000000 (.0000005 chance).
If you bought 14000000, all with different numbers, you would win. That is, the chance would be 14000000/14000000. Of course, you would lose too, unless the pot was greater than 14000000 and you didn't share it.
Best wishes,
Bob
quote]
Very intresting! Never realised that ! Well i have never bought a lottery ticket anyway!
'A Tax on Fools'
The lottery: a tax on the stupid and hopelessly optimistic!
Heres an intresting read;
http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_ ... t-all.html
could you answer my question then please??
Best. Oxymoron. Ever.
You're buying 7 different tickets. You have 7 chances in 14-odd million.Seems that its a 14m to 1 shot at winning the UK Lottery (6 from 49).
How would it affect the odds if my syndicate used a 6 from 7 permutation?
I've searched the web but cant find an algorithym that I can understand... (non academic you see
Nothing can change that.
I don't pay the Fool's Tax but I used to. Didn't win anything, ever.
Then, one day I had half an hour to kill (I had more time then :lol: ) so out of curiosity I put 18 months worth of lottery results into an excel sheet.
Next day I bought a ticket and chose the six most frequently occurring numbers in my excel sheet. That Saturday four of them came up and I won £94.
Not exactly statistical proof and certainly not enough to retire on, but nevertheless.....
Here's how to find out what you'd have won with your numbers:
http://idefex.net/b3talottery/
so, after all that...
is it the same to have 7 tickets in a 14m to 1 draw
or 1 ticket in a 2m to 1 draw????
and if so, why?????????
If there are 14,000,000 different possible permutations, and you buy 7 of them, then you have 1-in-2,000,000 chance.
As long as you buy 7 tickets with different numbers, it doesn't matter what the numbers are.
To Simplify.........
Your odds are 2/1 grasshopper
You will either Win or you Won't!!
but how about my earlier argument.If there are 14,000,000 different possible permutations, and you buy 7 of them, then you have 1-in-2,000,000 chance.
As long as you buy 7 tickets with different numbers, it doesn't matter what the numbers are.
Is it better to have 7 tickets in a 14m -1
or
1 ticket in a 2m to 1 ?
I regard it as my main charitable contribution of the year.
Depends on how you define 'better'.but how about my earlier argument.If there are 14,000,000 different possible permutations, and you buy 7 of them, then you have 1-in-2,000,000 chance.
As long as you buy 7 tickets with different numbers, it doesn't matter what the numbers are.
Is it better to have 7 tickets in a 14m -1
or
1 ticket in a 2m to 1 ?
Having 1 ticket in a 2m to 1 draw means you'll probably loose less. :wink:
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Neither.
I think you must have missed my point. It's exactly the same odds.
Maybe I'll try the ping pong balls in a bucket just for the fun of it ... at least it will be truly random with one less ball in the bucket after each pick. Need to find a cheap source of balls first :lol:
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
Years ago Paul McKenna(iirc) had a TV series.
The last show was about the lottery.
In an attempt to prove psycokenisis he suggested that everyone watching the show bought the same numbers.
The following day you had to sit in front of the lottery show and "will" the balls to come out.
The first number came out correct !
The second number came out correct ! (imagine how hard I had started concentrating :shock: )
The third number incorrect :cry:
But number four was spot on !
In total 3 numbers and a guaranteed payout of £10.
Funny thing is with Camelot and random numbers, the week after they considered stopping 3 numbers and a guaranteed payout of £10 and converting it to a share of fund.
Think of the consequences 20 million people all choose the same numbers for a £10 return.
The experiment certainly made me think.
Scouter
Found this on the web - hope your head doesn't hurt after reading :blackeye:
Enjoy
Jake
The following discussion is a very brief description of the combinatorics needed to derive the Lotto 6/49 probabilities.
Jackpot (all six winning numbers selected)
There are a total of 13,983,816 different groups of six numbers which could be drawn from the set {1, 2, ... , 49}. To see this we observe that there are 49 possibilities for the first number drawn, following which there are 48 possibilities for the second number, 47 for the third, 46 for the fourth, 45 for the fifth, and 44 for the sixth. If we multiply the numbers 49 x 48 x 47 x 46 x 45 x 44 we get 10,068,347,520. However, each possible group of six numbers (combination) can be drawn in different ways depending on which number in the group was drawn first, which was drawn second, and so on. There are 6 choices for the first, 5 for the second, 4 for the third, 3 for the fourth, 2 for the fifth, and 1 for the sixth. Multiply these numbers out to arrive at 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 720. We then need to divide 10,068,347,520 by 720 to arrive at the figure 13,983,816 as the number of different groups of six numbers (different picks). Since all numbers are assumed to be equally likely and since the probability of some number being drawn must be one, it follows that each pick of six numbers has a probability of 1/13,983,816 = 0.00000007151. This is roughly the same probability as obtaining 24 heads in succession when flipping a fair coin!
Second Prize (five winning numbers + bonus)
The pick of six must include 5 winning numbers plus the bonus. Since 5 of the six winning numbers must be picked, this means that one of the winning numbers must be excluded. There are six possibilities for the choice of excluded number and hence there are six ways for a pick of six to win the second place prize. The probability is thus 6/13,983,816 = 0.0000004291 which translates into odds against of 2,330,635:1.
Third Prize (five winning numbers selected, bonus number not selected)
As in the second prize there are six ways for a pick of six to include exactly five of the six drawn numbers. The remaining number must be one of the 42 numbers left over after the six winning numbers and the bonus number have been excluded. Thus there are a total of 6 x 42 = 252 ways for a pick of six to win the third prize. This becomes a probability of 252/13,983,816 = 0.00001802 or, equivalently, odds against of 55490.3:1.
Fourth Prize (four winning numbers selected)
There are 15 ways to include four of the six winning numbers and 903 ways to include two of the 43 non-winning numbers for a total of 15 x 903 = 13,545 ways for a pick of six to win the fourth prize, which works out to a probability of 13,545/13,983,816 = 0.0009686, that is odds against of 1031.4:1.
Fifth Prize (three winning numbers selected)
There are 20 ways to include three of the six winning numbers and 12,341 ways to include three of the 43 non-winning numbers for a total of 20 x 12,341 = 246,820 ways for a pick of six to win the fifth prize, which works out to a probability of 246,820/13,983,816 = 0.01765, that is odds against of 55.7:1.
So you need to spend £56 per draw to 'on average' win £10 each draw ... ie win £10 but lose £56 thus nett loss = £46
But still we all think we will win the big one.
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
And what are the odds on a person (e.g. me!!) getting two numbers for four weeks on the trot?
:evil: :twisted:
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