Day 219

I understand why so many people buy lottery tickets: Mine is burning in my mind, I honestly am excited for the draw.

It is a strange feeling; I can genuinely sense some sort of subsersive set of desires overcoming me on occasion. Normally sex is the occasion, but in this case, it is gambling.

The "Gambler's Fallacy" states that one ought to pick the draw that hasn't come up for a while (say you've flipped 3 heads in a row, so now you think you should guess tails) because 'it is due to come up.' The faulty logic is common, even among those of us who fancy that we never use it.

Of course, the coin doesn't know what its previous flip entailed, let alone does it have effective memories of past flips. The chances are always even. Rules of probability are generalizations, that become increasingly accurate the more and more times they are tested. Probably.

According to a website, the least drawn six numbers in 6/49 history are: 11, 13, 14, 15, 28, and 24. Each has been drawn more than 280 but less than 296 times in lotto history. The six most drawn numbers are: 31, 34, 40, 43, 45, and 47; each of these has been drawn between 345 and 360 times.

Is it advantageous to choose the former six? Or perhaps the latter six? Is there any meaning to the fact that the lowest six are all numbers that come before the highest six, or that the highest numbers are all above 30?

No.

But, in a sense, it does matter which ones you pick, for the one reason that if you win with the same numbers as someone else, you have to split the pot. I'd wager that if you picked 11, 13, 14, 15, 24, and 28, and actually won, you'd end up splitting the prize with 500 idiots who all thought it would help their chances to pick the rarest numbers. And yes, if they won they'd still be idiots. Decisions can't be redeemed retroactively, especially not by chance.

This is why I'd never pick the "Lost" numbers either (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42). If those were the winning numbers, probably a thousand Lost fans would end up splitting the two million dollar prize (two grand each, which is pretty measly for a lotto win).

Comments

Anonymous said…
so what numbers did you choose?
10:56 PM
Max said…
Random draw.

But, to answer the more relevent aspect of the question: The wrong ones. All six :P
11:04 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 58

I do fear, sometimes, that the act of pondering aloud has become a cathartic experience and nothing more . It is hard in this town to find a diversity of thought, because we've all been raised in very similar ways with the same norms, experiences, and conventions. I find that the mightiest opinions of some of the the twentysomethings I know are so damningly narrow that they cannot possibly stand to the slightest breeze of doubt. Often the biggest theory is the thinnest. Our shadows grow long and starved moments before they disappear under the sunset. The natural world has cursed us with its indifference, its vaccuum of conscience in which deeds neither good nor evil subsist. I find the urge to view our species of conscious and conscientious beings as alien. It is as though the world we inhabit was never intended for us to inhabit it. In short, this town is a box. This country, political system, individualistic ideology, humanist dogma, faux rebellion against imagined authority; it ...
Read more

Day 212

It is very true that the best people in the world at any discipline, skill, sport, instrument (etc). are never particularly well-rounded people. There should be, as my grandma mentioned over dinner last night, a competition for "well-roundedness" with international competitors. In order to win you'd have to be physically capable, perhaps musical and mathematical, moral and charitable, very learned, and so forth. And that's the interesting thing, the jacks of all trades get absolutely no attention from the peanut gallery. But on the contrary, they typically have the healthiest and happiest and most fulfilling of lives. I can't tell you how many young pianists I've met, for whom piano was the sole self-measure of pride and value. And, like all people who have themselves judged for one thing, they are utterly miserable, feeling highs and lows that appear and fade as quickly as do the passing opinions of strangers. --- On a tangent: some of the most miserable girl...
Read more

Day 168

You hear non-religious people say it all the time: "If only there was a God! That would honestly be great, if there was a supreme moral arbier in the universe looking out for my every action and running the universe with me in mind. It's really too bad there isn't." I used to say that, until I came across a few authors who vehemently claim that such a wish is, in reality, a wish for slavery. When we ask for the comfort of a god (or fantasize for it anyway) were asking for a kind of absolution that only the slave can have. And the price for that is extremely high. And still, there times when I do wish I were this sort of slave, though I no longer say so with a smile.
Read more