Admittedly this might seem an odd thread to create, however I think I've just solved the mystery of why most of us never win at the Lottery. (Lotto)

Firstly the majority of Odds calculations follow this understanding (as based upon http://www.scottware.com.au/tickets/odds.htm)

To calculate the odds for a lottery with 49 balls and 6 drawn numbers:

(49/6) x (48/5) x (47/4) x (46/3) x (45/2) x (44/1) = 13,983,816
(Of course this answer can be different depending on how your rounded the calculation off)

However in regards to my memory (since I haven't seen the lottery done in a while) there is usually three machines of which one a third party adjudicator picks to roll the balls.

This means that the odds are actually now multiplied by 3.

13,983,816*3 = 41,951,448

My point here is that the world tends to suggest that the first calculation is the Odd's for the lottery, but they miss out the pick of the machine. In doing so does this mean that the lottery companies have knowingly been frauding the public with odds that are incorrect?

[Edit]
Just to add to this, how exactly do they pick a person to be the third party adjudicator? I mean... whats the odds?

To add to this post heres an explaination of a Lottery Scam thats pulled by those that claim to be clairvoyant.

firstly they create a Database table with a number of entries matching the number of odds. Each one of those entries is potentially "6 lucky numbers" that can be "sold" to someone.

Now with a large table like that it might not make sense so rather than selling 6 numbers they might sell 36 numbers (6x6) for $10.

That means they have approx 14 million/10 = 1.4 million "Individual" sets of numbers to sell at $10 each.

Admittedly such people can't just sell numbers from thin air as legally they aren't selling anything (It's illegal in most countries to sell just numbers or do pyramid schemes where money is being exchanged for no tender.) So the majority of them tend to add the sale of a small trinket, the trinkets probably worth only 99 cents, however it's gets and extra $9.01 markup. Total sale price for 6 lucky numbers and a trinket $20.

To make their scams work better, they usually like to make you think you got a deal, so starting price $499 but there might be the include of some really generic writeup of your zodiac sign and maybe even a different trinket with a little less markup.

Simply put some people will get their "lucky numbers" and win a lotto or other gamble, which means they might write a thankyou to the con-person which gets put on their website for premotion of people that won money through their "scheme".

I suppose I'm suggesting that some people will see this as a way to get "guaranteed money" however the reality is it's a very clever grey area fraud.

The mob will now say that you are wrong. They will say something like:

The odds of winning are unfavourable? Tell that to the bloke who won!

Admittedly this might seem an odd thread to create, however I think I've just solved the mystery of why most of us never win at the Lottery. (Lotto)

was that ever a mystery? even a fungus should know the odds are like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. Nothing wrong with playing but if you are counting on paying your mortgage with it you're an idiot.

Well if your a Vege Buffys, don't start eating those Intelligent fungi.

Admittedly I worded it that way for those that do (Personally I think there is more chance of me finding the winning ticket in the street than actually paying to pick 6 numbers)

I read somewhere the odds of winning the UK lottery is the same as Elivis piloting a UFO and landing on top of the loch ness monster :eek:

However in regards to my memory (since I haven't seen the lottery done in a while) there is usually three machines of which one a third party adjudicator picks to roll the balls.

This means that the odds are actually now multiplied by 3.

13,983,816*3 = 41,951,448

My point here is that the world tends to suggest that the first calculation is the Odd's for the lottery, but they miss out the pick of the machine. In doing so does this mean that the lottery companies have knowingly been frauding the public with odds that are incorrect?

[Edit]
Just to add to this, how exactly do they pick a person to be the third party adjudicator? I mean... whats the odds?

The pick of the machine shouldn't matter. Each machine is still picking 6 numbers out of the 49 in a "pretty random" way. A smaller example would be a coin flip. If you guess heads, but I choose which of my 3 coins to flip, you'll still have a 50/50 chance of winning (provided none of my coins are biased).

Ah, but there is still certain points about those machines, for instance if they are rolled onto the stage from different directions then there is a possibility that even the slightest gradient change could alter how the machine spins the balls, in fact the machines themselves spin in different directions too, so it actually does add to the odds.

It would be like your 3 coins of choice were of different weights, shapes and sizes.

If you buy 13 million $1 tickets for a $60 million lottery, then you make it back, right?

If you buy 13 million $1 tickets for a $60 million lottery, then you make it back, right?

Right, but the problem with that is:
1) There is no lottery vendor who will sell you 13 million $ worth of tickets at once. Each lottery outlet is only allowed to sell a certain number of tickets per customer per day.

2) Since you can't buy all your tickets from one dealer ... you would be forced to hop from one ticket outlet to another buying 13 million tickets ... which is very time consuming. You only have a week to buy all the tickets before the draw and some of your time has to be spent eating, sleeping, and driving to each outlet. And its not to mention that you have to be carrying alot of money ... otherwise you would have to go to the bank every time to withdraw money to continue buying tickets .. .which is again time consuming.

3) You have to have 13 million $ already in your account and anyone with that kind of cash wouldn't even bother going through the process of buying 13 million tickets. They would find better things to do with their time. :)

If you buy 13 million $1 tickets for a $60 million lottery, then you make it back, right?

Not if there are 5 or more other winners beside you that you have to split the $60 million with.

Ah, but there is still certain points about those machines, for instance if they are rolled onto the stage from different directions then there is a possibility that even the slightest gradient change could alter how the machine spins the balls, in fact the machines themselves spin in different directions too, so it actually does add to the odds.

It would be like your 3 coins of choice were of different weights, shapes and sizes.

Alright, 13,983,816 people all buy different and distinct lotto tickets. According to you, each person has a 1 in 41,951,448 chance of winning. The event "person x wins" is excluse of the event "person y wins", where y is different from x. So to find the probability one of these 13,983,816 is the winner, we can add their individual respective chances of winning. We get a 1/3 chance one of these 13,983,816 people will have won. oops, they have all the possible outcomes covered, so this should actually be 1. It doesn't matter that they pick different machines, they are all going to be essentially as random as you could hope for, with each of the 13,983,816 possible outcomes equally likely.

different sized coins, fine-I have a nickel a dime and a quarter. You pick heads or tails. I'll then pick the coin. What are your odds of winning? No matter which coin I pick, there's still 50/50 heads/tails.

Whatever, you guys just aren't going to win because you don't pick the numbers right :cool:

Its easy (but would be tedious) to figure out the probability of winning.
You'd just need to draw up a probability tree with the 49 numbers at the top and the possible combinations stemming down. See I'm not a massive geek with way too much time on my hands so i would never do something like that.
And I will continue to try my hand at powerball, just in case.

Several innane and off-topic posts have been removed.

Never mind statistics or physics,

Seriously, has anyone here actually KNOWN someone who've won ANY big lottery? Even second prize? I've always had a feeling that the "winner" is really an actor who portrays as a winner just to show that people actually win. Since everything is done by computers these days, all they have to do is find a combination that NO ONE has picked and then say those are the winning numbers.

That’s preposterous. Lottery companies (government, etc) make tons of money holding lotteries, especially big jackpot lotteries. There’s really no reason for them to cheat. Anyways, lotteries such as powerball are almost impossible to rig. The machines are monitored, they have independent witnesses during the draw, etc..

Yes, that's balony. The big lotteries I know of are done with balls flying out of a machine. It's hard to rig that.

There was a case of a state lottery (I forget the state, I can probably find it if anyone is terribly curious) that had a "pick 3 game", where you picked 3 numbers ranging from 0 to 9. Much smaller prizes than a 6/49 since you had higher odds of winning. Anyways, they used a computer to pick the numbers. After some amount of draws (I want to say 9), someone realized that the number 9 had never been picked. They did some statistics and found the probability of this happening if the numbers were truly uniformly random was very low. They went and checked their random number generator and found it was flawed so 9 would never be chosen. The lotto company ended with a lot of egg on their faces and alot of apologies to dish out. So you're right not to trust a computer drawn lotto, but those aren't the big ones I know of.

If you want to win, or at least highen your chances, why not move to Poland, they have another system, with less numbers or so, I think that the chances are about 5.400.000:1. Alas, the amount you can win isn´t that high... :D