Winning the lottery is the dream of many people. Those who play typically have some type of strategy in mind that they use, which often includes picking the same numbers every week.
If your lucky numbers were 4, 15, 23, 24, 35, and 42 and you were playing the Bulgarian National Lottery in 2009, you would have been pretty happy.
On September 6th, 2009 those numbers were picked. If you kept playing your lucky numbers, you would have been even happier on September 10th, 2009 when they were picked again.
Identical numbers just four days apart.
Not surprisingly, many people called for an investigation into the lottery to see if there was any type of tampering involved. The investigation confirmed that it happened simply by random chance, but how is that possible.
Well, the odds of any specific series of numbers getting picked in a lottery are very low, the odds of the same numbers being picked just a few days apart aren’t nearly as low as one might think.
This is because the math in these situations is not intuitive.
In a six ball lottery game, the odds of any any specific series of numbers coming up are just under 1 in 14 million.
So, one might think that the odds of the same set of numbers coming up within days of each other are at least 1 in 28 million, if not worse.
That is where most people get confused.
To calculate the odds of a repeat number happening within a set amount of time, you need to look at how often the lottery numbers are picked as well.
The probability of this happening then becomes 1/14 million x 1/14 million x 1/14 million (for however many lottery dates you want to calculate for).
Eventually, it becomes more likely than not that the same numbers will be picked close enough together to gain attention. In the case of this type of lottery, the math shows that this type of thing should happen about once every 43 years.
Once you add in the fact that there are thousands of lotteries that take place throughout the world, it should not be surprising to hear a story like this from time to time.
Even if it seems unlikely (and it is), the odds are not nearly as astronomical as one might think.
Playing the same lottery numbers each day isn’t a bad strategy.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious “pyramids” discovered in Antarctica. What are they?