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Hacking the Lottery

Posted: March 2nd, 2018, 5:20 pm
by Bill Mullins
Interesting account of an old man who discovers circumstances in which a state lottery pays off.

Re: Hacking the Lottery

Posted: March 2nd, 2018, 10:06 pm
by Jack Shalom
Very entertaining read. Thanks.

Re: Hacking the Lottery

Posted: March 3rd, 2018, 12:07 pm
by Joe Mckay
Reminds me of a cool story I read a few years ago:

https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff-lottery/

Hacking the Lottery

Posted: March 4th, 2018, 12:06 am
by Daniel Bain
Thanks. Enjoyed both articles!

Re: Hacking the Lottery

Posted: March 6th, 2018, 10:05 am
by tulane
I did a data science project last year, where I tried to hack a Canadian Lottery called the 6/49. Numbers are picked by a ping-pong ball machine.

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I obtained a spreadsheet with every number picked for about the past 20 years or so. Then, I converted each number to the sum of segments on a 7-segment display.

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So for example, the number 1 would have 2 segments. The number 7 would have 3 segments. The number 48 would have 4 + 7 = 11 segments. Etc...

What I found is that there is a very strong correlation between the number of segments in a number, and the probability of that number being chosen. In other words, the more ink on the ball, the more likely that the number will be picked.

Since the number 8 has 7 segments, it is more likely to be picked than 11, which has only 4 segments.

Re: Hacking the Lottery

Posted: March 6th, 2018, 4:24 pm
by lybrary
tulane wrote:What I found is that there is a very strong correlation between the number of segments in a number, and the probability of that number being chosen.

What do you mean with 'very strong correlation'? Can you provide numbers? How did the historic probability distribution look like for all the numbers?

Re: Hacking the Lottery

Posted: March 11th, 2018, 5:08 am
by Zig Zagger
A great read, Bill. Thank you for sharing!

Re: Hacking the Lottery

Posted: June 1st, 2018, 3:21 am
by EndersGame
Fascinating stories - I'll echo the thanks others have expressed to Bill for sharing this.

Somehow there's something pleasant about reading about a little guy who out-wits the big corporation, isn't there?

Maybe someone should talk to Derren Brown about How To Win the Lottery? :)

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