Hi. I heard rumors about lotto statistics before, so I decided to check it out. I'm using Canadian lotto, but this works with any.
I got a copy of all past 649 lotto numbers from www.wclc.com. It's a pdf, and I converted it to text, cut out the actual lotto numbers, and made a list. Then I made statistics for how often each number comes out, and I was blown away to find that the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 have come out over 5000 times each, while the numbers 10-49 come out 300-400 times each. All the numbers below 10 are favorites. I'm not sure, but the only thing that makes sense to me is that the weight and aerodynamics of the paint cause single digit balls to float better during the draw. I would be interested to know if this is true with other lotto games (even bingo). I have my notes here: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/~robert/lotto-649/readme.txt With this, it's highly recommended to pick one or two numbers below 10, when choosing lotto numbers. All the numbers above 10 are drawn almost equally. I've tried to create a random number generator, but the ones I write end up biased to low numbers and I don't understand why. This: for ((i=1;i<=99999;i+=1)); do echo $(($(echo $(head -n100 /dev/urandom | od -N 30) | cut -d ' ' -f2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 | \ sed 's/ //g') % 49 +1)) | sed -e 's/-//' -e '/^0/d' >> rng-results.txt done and: for ((i=1;i<=99999;i+=1)); do echo $(($(./arc4random) % 49 + 1)) >> rng-results.txt done both create results that progressively favor low numbers (in a non-random way). Do any of you know why, or can suggest another method that will generate numbers between 1 and 49 that will be mathematically equal? Despite being random each of the 49 numbers should come out roughly equal amount of times. The ideal script would choose one or two (randomly decided) numbers between 1 and 10, because they are statistical favorites, then choose the remaining numbers between 10 and 49, then choose a bonus number between 1 and 49. Then check these results against old draws, to make sure they haven't been drawn before (even a 4 out of 6 match with old draws would statistically lower the chances of it being drawn again in the future). The chances of winning any prize is 1 in 32. Using this method may tip it to 1 in 30, so why not... it can't hurt. I used to let the lotto machine pick my numbers, but after seeing the huge favoritism to 1-10 numbers I'm going to start picking my own numbers. robert
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