Did you take a basic statistics course? Then here is your chance to write History (LOTTERY - MEGA MILLIONS and EUROMILLIONS)

What are the odds of winning the MEGA MILLIONS Jackpot?
Did you take a basic statistics course? Then you know that you only need to multiply a few times to get the answer: 1 in 175,711,536.

What are the odds of a MEGA MILLIONS or EuroMillions Jackpot rollover n times in a row?

What were the odds of the $390 million Jackpot, shared by the "Georgia truck driver" and "somebody else"?
Or in other words: what are the odds of an Advertised Annuity Jackpot of $XXX million, which
- required a jackpot rollover n times in a row, and
- had for each of those n draws an effective sales volume of Vn?

All the parameters are known, i.e.
- the odds of winning the MEGA MILLIONS Jackpot: 1 in 176 million;
- the price for each bet;
- the official sales history, draw after draw, until the record Advertised Annuity Jackpot of $390 million.Note that for this calculation you don't even have to know the distribution of the revenue from those bets, in particular which percent goes to the jackpot.

So it should be peanuts for you to calculate what are the odds that the Jackpot could reach that sum, i.e. that week after week nobody got the right combination.
Besides having to multiply a few times, the only additional thing is to use a statistical distribution function that reflects lottery bets, say the Poisson distribution.

It was never as easy to enter History - all you need is to input data into the calculator
Matt Marriott claims that this computation alone immediately proves that MEGA MILLIONS is rigged (the same for Euromillions, where the maximum number of weeks of a jackpot rollover, i.e. a draw without a jackpot winner, happened several times in the last two years), i.e. that what he explained in 2004 as first (http://www.goldismoney.info/forums/t15873-government-jackpot-lottery-fraud-exposed-first-time-by-matt-marriott-nov-23-2004.html)and a couple of years later also as only one, really happens each week:
- a combination Cx that nobody did is picked up from the computer database that stores all the bets,
- after which a video tape is produced with background music suggesting continuity,
- while in fact that video tape is an assemblage of cuts suggesting that the balls for Cx are being drawn.

So here is your chance to enter History by being the first to prove Matt Marriott wrong. Prove that our Lotteries are not rigged! Go for it!

We at the State Lottery can't give you a jackpot, but you can count on as many X dollars as those 1 in X odds! Be another lucky "Georgia truck driver"!

All draws are open to the public.
Why not pop in to the WSB-TV studio at 11pm on a Wednesday or Saturday night and watch for yourself?
I suspect that you could also obtain uncut recordings of previous draws if you asked.

I can't find sales histories on the MegaMillions site. I'm constructing an approximation from the prizes and jackpot amounts, and will try to give you odds of the jackpot reaching various amounts shortly.

What do you think that X might be?

The total number of Mega Millions combinations is 175,711,536 (http://www.durangobill.com/MegaMillionsOdds.html).

Since the total population of the United States is 300 million, at least half of everyone here would have to buy a ticket in order for a winner to be likely. I guess some people do buy multiple tickets, but mostly when the jackpot gets higher and more people participate.


(Note: All calculations assume that the numbers on any given ticket are picked randomly. In practice, many people pick numbers based on family birthdays, etc., and thus many tickets will have a preponderance of low numbers. As a consequence, the probabilities of a single Jackpot winner will be somewhat lower and the probabilities of no winner or multiple winners will tend to be slightly higher than the numbers shown below. Also, if the numbers picked in the drawing are clustered at the high end of the 1-56 range, there will tend to be relatively less “partial match” winners. The reverse will hold true if the drawing numbers cluster in the low end of the number range.)

Let me guess. The Illuminati are rigging the lotteries now.

ROFLMAO.

Cesspool. PLEASE?

Where would we be if we Cesspooled all the crazy ideas?
Perhaps we'll Cespool it if it degenerates with no productive discussion.

Funnily enough I've always wondered if lotteries are fixed.

From what I gather, we're suppossed to participate in the 'megamillions lottery' (whatever that is) in order to prove some guy wrong. moreover, the guy has proven (or claims to have proven) that this lottery is 'rigged'. nevermind the media frenzy over any inkling of such a scandal and the deluge of frivolous lawsuits which would most certainly ensue if this was shown to be a possibility.

Now what being the next Georgia truck driver has to do with taking a statistics course, I don't know.. but I'm quite sure in any case that if human beings can figure out Fermat's theorem, someone sure as hell would have discovered some determinism in the lottery (if there is such a thing to be discovered). Besides which, why are we being told this? Any sane person would cash in on this discovery and tell the least people possible while doing it.

I don't see how telling more people and (alledgedly) increasing the chances that more people could win is somehow an improvement.



But then again I'm only studying differential geometry and I haven't ever taken a basic statistics course.

:p

Why not pop in to the WSB-TV studio at 11pm on a Wednesday or Saturday night and watch for yourself?

WSB has great radio. I live here in Atlanta with WSB.

But then again I'm only studying differential geometry and I haven't ever taken a basic statistics course.

I've never been interested in statistics. I never took a course in it and I have been trying to avoid it.

OK Matt,
It looks like about 510 million entries in Mega Millions were played in the 15 weeks leading up to the $390 million jackpot.

So, the question you're asking is - is that reasonable? Is it reasonable that 510 million entries in a row could miss out on a 1 in 176 million chance?

And the answer is... yes.
There's about 1 chance in 18 that there will be no winners in 510 million entries.

So, the question you're asking is - is that reasonable? Is it reasonable that 510 million entries in a row could miss out on a 1 in 176 million chance?

And the answer is... yes.
There's about 1 chance in 18 that there will be no winners in 510 million entries.

(175999999/176000000)^510000000*100 = 5.5148416...% chance.

1 in 18.1328870806... chance of this happening.

Get your facts straight!





;)

He did say ~about..

He did say ~about..

That depends on the meaning of "about!"

That site is funny. They worked out that if you drive one mile to the store to buy your lottery ticket, you are 6 times more likely to get killed or kill someone in an auto accident than you are to win the jackpot.

More Illuminati End Times Hoaxes exposed first and long after still only by me:

Iran = petrodollar = CIA

Google:
US attack to Iran for dummies
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=US+attack+to+Iran+for+dummies

#1 as of today is the correct explanation
http://iran-hoax.blogspot.com/

Prove that our Lotteries are not rigged! Go for it!


NOT rigged? That is proving a negative. Why don't you prove that it is rigged first?

The numbers chosen by ticket buyers are not randomly selected- and so the odds of the lottery being won are less than random chance would say.

Welcome to the Cesspool.

A Matt Marr post in the Cess Pool.
Must be a million billion to one.
This forum is rigged.

The numbers chosen by ticket buyers are not randomly selected- and so the odds of the lottery being won are less than random chance would say.

Correct.
One week in the UK, 133 people were Jackpot Winners.
People expecting to be able to tell their boss to stuff his job were very disappointed.

People use the same strategies in picking numbers.
They use birthdates and lucky numbers.
If they are trying to pick randomly, they spread the numbers around the ticket in a manner that looks random to them.
They aren't.

The lottery results are nearly perfectly random.
If they coincide with the numbers people like to pick, there will be a lot of winners.
If not, there will be few winners. Or none.

When Matt Marr has a good think about this, he will be straight back to tell you he's made a mistake.
What's the odds on that?

Funnily enough I've always wondered if lotteries are fixed.

Of course they are. Here's how it works. First everyone buys lotto tickets, lets say 500 million worth. Then they say the jackpots only going to be 25 million dollars. Where did the other 475 million dollars go?? Into the pockets of the politicians as always. That's how it is fixed. :(:shrug: