h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The best strategy is to pick fully random numbers. The combination is not more likely then any other combination, but it is less likely that when you win you'll have to share the prize with other people who used the same system.

The best strategy is to get other people to play for you, I always thought.

Use bulk mailing software/chain mails to encourage people to use some particular system for picking numbers; include a note saying you'd appreciate ten grand or so if they win using your system. If you could get a few million people picking numbers using your system, there's a reasonable chance that one of them would win... and a fair chance they'd think of sending you some money.

It's a long shot, but the odds are considerably better than playing yourself, I would think...

26199

PS I've never tried this, but it's the best get-rich-quick scheme I've come up with thus far

A get rich scheme that relies on a strangers honesty ??? It's bound to fail, you'd be better off playing the lottery !!

I always liked the thought that the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.

1-2-3-4-5-6 is a bad idea: to win a large sum you need to have numbers few others do.

Therefore any random selection is better. Or maybe skewed away from low numbers (B/days, ages, etc)

These may be good numbers for just those reasons. People will not pick them because - well - it could just not be that the lottery number turns out to be an integer sequence rather than Aunt Megs birthday in days from the death of Napolean III divided by the square root of the loft area. When it fact it has just a much chance as any.

Once the Quebec Lotto 6/49 came in "close". It was something like 2,3,4,5,21,30 or something like that.

Incidentally the Quebec Lottery organisation pays like this.

You pay $1 (Canadian $ - about 45p)

You get 3 numbers right you get $10. This means you lose about 2/3 your money (I think)

You get 4 numbers you get about $50 - $200 depending on the jackpot and number of winners. Statistically this is relatively common so the payoff is almost proportional to the jackpot - but I can't be bothered to work out the correlation. You normally get about $100 once in a blue moon if you pile your money into this scheme.

You will more likely die in a horrible accident or become famous as a TV psychic than ever getting more than 4 numbers.

Me, I'd go for the TV Psychic. That way you get money, not killed.

And people DO pick 1-2-3-4-5-6: it's the most popular set of 6 digits!

1,2,3,4,5,6 came up on the German lottery once (can't remember when) about 100,000 "winners" were very disappointed!

Must have been within the last few years: when the UK lottery started, they said 1-2-3-4-5-6 had never come up anywhere ever.

I think it was quite a long time ago. Sometime between Jan '93 and Mar '95 the German Lottery had a huge jackpot (DM45million) which was won by one person. The run-up to the draw was like Lotto fever, and most newspapers and tv programmes ran Lottery trivia articles, and the 1-2-3-4-5-6 thing was given as an example.

45 million Deutche Marks = £14 million Sterling.



Wow.

But at the time the exchange rate was about 2.2 so it was more like 20 million Sterling.

Doublepluswow!

My strategy, for what it's worth (when I remember to play) is: 1 row of birhthdays (boring), 1 row of numbers all over 32, 1 row of completely random numbers per daughter (2 of them) who choose them themselves. Which can be messy because they're 3 and 2.

I am a little suprised that 1,2,3,4,5,6 is actually that popular. This is still more effort than having the computer pick the numbers for you, like you can here in Canada. I have watched queues of people usually most busy on the day the social welfare cheques are given out, enter a whole pile of lottery numbers. I have never seen someone just scratch of the first six boxes: I often have seen people spending a great amount of effort with furrowed brows picking numbers. It is a "hope" tax for the poor with the spare time to bother.

I just go for the computer numbers and save firing off any extra neurons.

It is a sad fact of life that the people who play the lotteries are the ones who would be better off investing the 5 or 10 (pounds, dollars, whatever) a week that they spend on the lottery in their or their kids' futures. But they live in hope. And as the saying goes: where there's hope there's life! And when you consider the actual percentage of people who win an amount of money big enough to make a difference to their life.......

My first boyfriend's dad was posted to Canada (with the army) won a couple of Million on the lottery and never came back. (he took the family). They are the only people I have ever even had nodding acquaintance with who have won. Yet still I play (only occasionally though, and I don't check the numbers if I don't have a ticket)

Scientifically speaking prime numbers should be a good bet, they turn up in nature alarmingly often. Has a study ever been done of prime numbers in lottery draws? (maybe I could get a grant from the lottery in UK to study it!)

Researching this tonight: post a reply and I'll tell you soon.

I won $10 on the Quebec lottery this week! Yipee. I spent $10 on the ticket, so I made a net gain of $0. I am so incredibly fortunate to beat the odds - This must be due to divine intervention, good kharma or something - I did not lose any money.

Oh.. I used the computer generated option.. so enough neurons fired to negotiate the transacation with the ticket vendor to hand over the ticket in exchange for ten Canadian Dollars, and no more than that. Not bad for making no money with no effort.

Actually, the more recently a number has been drawn, the more likely it is to come up again.

Unintuitive, but true.

*cringes*

I suppose you can prove that, too?

26199

After a few years of trying to find order in the chaos of lottery draws, yes I can.

Most often, numbers will have a few long intervals, then have a cluster of hits (maybe 4 or 5 hits in 10 or 12 drawings)... generally half or two-thirds of drawings will have at least one number repeated from the previous drawing. If you track a drawing for a while, you will see that most hits for any given number occur within a half-dozen drawings of the last time it came up.

Remember, the Universe is chaotic... not random.