Lottery Lie 5

This is the fifth article in the Lotto Lies series. There are many who believe that there are no patterns or trends in lottery numbers. Therefore, using a computer for lottery number analysis is a waste of time. After all, the lottery is a random game of luck. Right? How could there be any trend? Such skeptics would have a good point except for the fact that the trends are there for all to see. Well, at least those who are willing to watch.

Lottery Lie No. 5 – There are no such things as lottery trends.

Alright, let’s look up some lottery trends.

Prospecting

Now, there are people who have a unique ability to look at the history of lottery winning numbers and see patterns and trends in lottery numbers. They are few and far between and, I admit, I have no idea how they do it. Most people, myself included, could look at their winning number history for weeks and just hope they find that bottle of Motrin.

If we’re going to look for lottery trends, we’ll need some search tools. Such modern prospecting is done with a computer and a quality lottery software program. We also need to know what a lottery trend looks like. Otherwise, how would we recognize one if we found it?

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a graphic is better.

Let’s start this discussion by making a graph. We will use the Mega Millions 5/56 lottery as an example.

First, for every draw in the history of the lottery, we will select 5 numbers at random and compare them to the winning numbers and see how well we did. If two of our numbers were winning, we would draw a 2 on our chart for that draw. If none of our numbers were winning, we would draw a 0, etc. When we were done, we would have a nice graph to see our effort. We will call this graph our random selection graph.

Each dot on the graph represents how we did on that drawing. But how well did we do overall? The easiest way to answer that is to simply average all the points on the graph. This would give us an Average Number of Hits per Draw. We can use this as a figure of merit. We could compare other number selection techniques with this figure of merit to see if we did better or worse than random number selection.

What should this Batting Average Per Draw be? Selecting 5 numbers out of 56 means that we are selecting 5/56 or 8.9% of the possible numbers. Therefore, we should expect that over the long term we will average 8.9% x 5 correct selections per draw or 0.45 Average Hits per draw. The Average Hits Per Draw for the random selection chart will be very, very close to this number.

Some of you are probably wondering, “What was this exercise for?” The purpose was to find the Average Hits per Drawing, 0.45. Now we can compare the lottery trends we discovered with this number to see if the trend is better or worse than the random number selection. Now, we know what a lottery trend should look like. If we find a Mega Millions trend with an Average Wins per Draw greater than 0.45, we are correct.

Oh! In Trend.

So are there trends like this? And if they do, how good are they? The answer to the first question is: “Yes, in all draws, every day.” The answer to the second question is: “Much better than you would expect.” We’re not talking about a paltry 1 or 2% improvement over random number selection. We are not talking about 4% or 5%. We are not talking about 8% or 9%. We are not talking about 11% to 12%. Oh no. Depending on the lottery, we’re talking about a 15% to 30% improvement!

Excited yet? Let’s look at 194 Mega Millions 5/56 lottery draws from 01/04/11 to 11/09/12. Since we’re looking at lottery trends, we’re looking for numbers that are resurfacing in some statistically influential way. In other words, we are looking back at lottery history to select numbers to play in the next draw. But where in history should we look?

This is where a computer with a lottery software program is indispensable because it would be virtually impossible to discover these trends through manual calculations. Well, not impossible, but the draw is this Saturday and, next month, after working 24/7 without eating or drinking, when you finally complete the analysis, the train has already left the station.

The cycles will bring you around

Cycle 13 has been the best of the Mega Millions lottery. Loop 13 identifies a place to look in lottery history. That place is 13 drawings ago. By always going to that place to find 5 numbers to play, instead of selecting them at random, you would have averaged 0.56 winning numbers per draw instead of 0.45. That’s a staggering 24% improvement! This is an obvious trend that is statistically relevant and cannot be ignored. Cycle 3 was a close second at 0.55.

But that is not all. Without realizing that it was a bad choice, suppose you always selected your numbers from eight draws ago; Cycle 8. Unfortunately, it only produced an average of 0.36 winning numbers per draw. Cycle 13 outperformed Cycle 8 by an amazing 55.5%! As you can clearly see, making good decisions is vitally important. Now, wouldn’t you like to have this kind of information available before you choose your lottery numbers?

In any other game of luck, a 24% to 55.5% advantage will bring a big smile to any player’s face. This is not to say that Cycle 13 has always produced winners. But it does mean that, over time, it has been the best producer of winning numbers.

I can hear the skeptics right now, jumping up and down, saying, “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s still going to be the best.” True, but these tendencies have what I call Persistence. They do not appear overnight or disappear tomorrow. Cycles 13 and 3 were among the top ten that produced cycles 50 drawings ago (drawing 144). That means they have been two of the top picks for the last 50 draws.

So if you’re going to play the world’s toughest game, you need to take advantage of everything your lottery has to offer. Does this mean you’re going to win the lottery? Not at all. There is much more about it. This is just a simple example to appease naysayers, skeptics and critics who try to insist that lottery number analysis is a waste of time and that there are no patterns or trends in lottery numbers. Now, to join the ranks of serious lottery players, you’ll need a computer and quality lottery software.

Look for the sixth article in the Lotto Lies series; “Best lottery tip: Don’t play the lottery because that’s gambling.”