How Random Are Lotteries?

By Author: Darrel Dolph
Total Articles: 46
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When it comes to the lottery, there is one contentious topic which is always hotly debated. Here are the two sides. One side proclaims that there is nothing you can do to increase your chances of winning the lotto and the other side disagrees. This debate revolves around the meaning of these two words: Random Draw.

The misunderstood meaning of the word Random is the catalyst in this entire debate. It is not only misunderstood by many people but, also, misapplied in many cases. There is a fog of misunderstanding, misinformation and misapplication surrounding it. So, let's see if we can lift the fog.

Shortly after an experiment begins where random selections are made, certain patterns and trends begin to emerge. Mathematicians, scientists and engineers are all aware of this. In fact, in any random process, cyclical events are observed at the start and begin to dissappear with the passage of time. The classical mathematicians response to these observations would be, 'Well, you haven't run enough trials yet.'

Guess what? I totally agree! But, bear in mind that a mathematician is focused on the long ...
... term because he knows that the results will vindicate his position. Let's use a classical example of a random process to see who's right. We are going to flip for it.

A coin is flipped 100 times. When completed, the results were 65 Heads and 35 Tails; the intial trend is obvious. Unphased by this, the mathematician says, 'That is simply an anomaly. If you run more trials, eventually, the results will even out.' So, the coin is flipped some more until it's flipped 1,000 times. Results: 550 Heads and 450 Tails. It is easy to see the mathematician's prediction is coming to pass.

But, still not quitegood enough. So, the coin is flipped 10,000 times and the results are 5010 Heads and 4990 Tails. Essentially, the occurrences of Heads and Tails are now equal. The mathematician is happy knowing that he has proven that the game is random.

Hold on just a second! The experiment wasn't very random after 100 trials. The experiment was somewhat more random after 1,000 trials. After 10,000 trials, it looks like the results of the coin flipping experiment are pretty random. And, this goes to the heart of the misunderstanding regarding the word random. Patterns and trends exist in all random processes at one time or another. But, given enough time or enough trials, any patterns or trends will be masked by the shear volume of data.

At this point, some of you might be asking, 'What does this have to do with winning the Lottery?' The answer is, 'Everything!' In the random process of flipping a coin, there are only 2 possible outcomes. It took 10,000 trials before a mathematician could say unequivocally that the process was random. In a 6/54 lottery, as an example, there are 25,827,165 possible outcomes. Do you see where this is going? At two drawings per week, it will take 10's of thousands of years before we ever reach the poinst where all lottery numbers will have occurred approximately the same number of times. My friend, you're not going to be here that long. And, in this analogy, the short term is your LIFE TIME!

So, it is alright, come out from underneath the blanket and take a look. The bogeyman won't bite. Lottery number patterns and trends are there for everyone to see. And, they are FREE. You can use them to increase your chances of winning the lottery in your life time. The clock is ticking. So, do you have TIME to play the lottery?
Professor Dolph is the famous Lottery expert, lecturer and columnist who developed LONA, your LOtto Number Advisor. Go to Picking Lottery Numbers for a different look at Lottery software.