Page 1 of 2

another strange phenomenon

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:47 am
by Obadiah
why is it that only old people win the lottery? I mean seriously...theres this lady on television that won the lottery and she looks 60 or so sitting next to egg mc.man who is god knows how old...i think its sad never to see a typical guy/girl like one of us who has not hit 40 yet or who does not have the shakes win

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:51 am
by GM
Yes, but assuming they've got children, the winnings will eventually pass to them and their children...

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:07 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
It's all in the demographics. Maybe start a campaign urging younger people to play it ;).

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:29 am
by CoderGoblin
That's not strictly true... Younger people do win but frequently sqander the money. Fast Cars and motorbikes are a favourite for men.

As for old people winning it I suggest you watch the film "Waking Ned" (or "Long Live Ned Divine" as it was called in Germany) if you want a laugh about old people winning the lottery.

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:55 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Good movie - Biased of course being Irish...;)

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 12:21 pm
by alex.barylski
Maugrim_The_Reaper wrote:Good movie - Biased of course being Irish...;)
Snatch, Boonedock Saints and another movie with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt...

Great movies...but I'm also part Scottish as well...so Trainspotting is equally as cool...

Now for my other half...hmmmm...there are no cool Polish/Ukrainian movies... :P

Note to others: I think the fact no on young seems to win has more to do with the fact of how a lottery system actually works...

It's a game of numbers...comletely random...but your odds increase each time you play...the law of averages would suggest that obviously older people tend to win more because they have more time and money they are willing to spend on playing the lottery...

I play, but only once every couple of months when I remember...my parents however, every week they buy several tickets...my granny was even worse.

Visible minorities new to the country...play the lottery (locally anyways) like crazy...I mean like $50/month crazy...and they often win...

So I would personally argue it's just the way life works I guess...has nothing to do with conspiracy of lottery commissions being against young people or anything...or being young and having bad luck...it's just the law of averages... :)

Cheers :)

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:41 pm
by Mordred
Hockey wrote:..but your odds increase each time you play...
This is not true, your odds are exactly the same however often you play.

I am not aware of any particular statistics about lottary winners and players, but an uneducated guess would be (as proposed by someone above) the demographics are skewed towards the people of and above middle age. Lottary winners are of course equally distributed, but only among the players, which means that people of and above middle age will stand out.

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:15 pm
by onion2k
Mordred wrote:This is not true, your odds are exactly the same however often you play.
Distributed probability is a complex subject, but Hockey is sort of right. If you buy 100 tickets on a single week then you're more likely to win than if you were to buy 1 ticket a week for 100 weeks. Obviously you'd have to pick 100 different sets of numbers for it to work, but your odds would be better. Buying more tickets for a single draw increases your chances of winning (I assume thats what he meant by 'your odds increase every time you play').

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 6:14 pm
by alex.barylski
Mordred wrote:
Hockey wrote:..but your odds increase each time you play...
This is not true, your odds are exactly the same however often you play.
I am not aware of any particular statistics about lottary winners and players, but an uneducated guess would be (as proposed by someone above) the demographics are skewed towards the people of and above middle age. Lottary winners are of course equally distributed, but only among the players, which means that people of and above middle age will stand out.
Are you serious?

I'm not the greatest in math...clearly...as I would be arguing by now :P

But...how does that work?

You absolutely won't win if you don't play....so how does buying 100,000 tickets as compared to zero *not* increase your odds of winning???

Doesn't the lottery system work on something like.

You pick a combination of numbers and when you get all of them right, you win the jackpot.

Permutations and combinations (if I remember correctly) allow you to calculate the number of possible combinations.

If the letters you were allowed to pick were:
A or B

And you were only allowed to use two at any time:

Code: Select all

AA
AB
BA
BB
If you were allowed to use one character or both:

Code: Select all

A
AA
AB
B
BA
BB
6 combinations are possible...

Where I live the popular game is called 6/49 where you are allowed to choose 6 numbers each ranging from 1-49

32, 36, 13, 8, 23, 23 Is an example set or whatever...

You odds of winning are: 13, 841, 287, 201 or basically getting struck by lightning... :P

Thats if you play the game once...your odds of winning if you don't play at all are ZERO.

Where I get confused is, I'm not sure if whether you use completely different numbers or just one in each game you play, whether it increases your odds greatly or not.

By playing:

Code: Select all

32, 36, 13, 8, 23, 23
AND
32, 36, 13, 12, 23, 23
Your odds would naturally be increased by ONE as there is ONE less set which the lottery system can return and *not* have you win. At least this is what makes sense to me with my limited knowledge of mathematics :P

I have only ever read up on this when trying to better understand encryption...so I ain't promising anything as this subject is pretty cplicated, at least for those who do not understand it anyways. :lol:

So explain to me, how the more you play doesn't affect your odds of winning??? I'm seriously bewildered by that claim...

It's like the proverbial coin toss scenario...a coin has 2 sides and in theory I don't think it matters how many times you flip the coin, you have a 50/50 chance of getting either side...

Of course this excludes natural forces which influence odds, such as which side of the coin was facing up when flipped, how hard you flipped the coin, etc...

I haven't read anything on this subject in a long while...this is completely off the roof of my head, so I sologize if I'm way off and sound like a Gr. 3 math student :lol:

You have me wondering though...as my understanding is poor, all I know has been through self education, so my understanding is likely off...

Anyone know anything they care to share in real laymen terms???

Cheers :)

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:02 pm
by feyd
There are companies that ensure they will win the lottery. How do they do that, you ask? They wait for the winnings to get high enough and then buy every single combination possible.

The last company I saw/heard doing it would wait for about the $200M mark before stepping in. You have to remember that as the bank increases so does the number of people playing. They wait until they are sure that even split winnings pays for itself and enough profit before stepping in.

Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 5:00 pm
by Obadiah
wouldent you be spending more than the payout

Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 5:03 pm
by feyd
Do the math and find out how many combinations are possible.

Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 6:13 pm
by nickvd
Obadiah wrote:wouldent you be spending more than the payout
You would just wait until the payout is greater than the cost of One Dollar per permutation...

Code: Select all

49!
49C6 = ---------- 
           6! * 43!

        = 6.082818640342679e+62
          --------------------------------
        720 * 6.041526306337384e+52

        = 6.082818640342679e+62
          --------------------------------
                4.34989894e+55

        = 13,983,816 Possible Combinations of 6 numbers chosen from 49 possibles
So, given the above, you simply wait until the jackpot is greater than $14 million, and (assuming you dont have to share any prizes) you are guaranteed to profit..

Note, my math might be wrong, it's been a while..


<edit>
Assuming of course that you have an extra $14 mil sitting around somewhere....can i borrow 100 grand?
</edit>

Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 10:36 pm
by feyd
nickvd wrote:can i borrow 100 grand?
Sure.


Image


You can keep it.

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:27 pm
by daedalus__
Mordred wrote: This is not true, your odds are exactly the same however often you play.
I have to disagree with this.

Exactly the same?