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Lottery Mathematics - Wikipedia
Lottery Mathematics - Wikipedia
Lottery Mathematics - Wikipedia
Lottery mathematics is used to calculate probabilities of winning or losing a lottery game. It is based
heavily on combinatorics, particularly the twelvefold way and combinations without replacement.
Contents
Choosing 6 from 49
Odds of getting other possibilities in choosing 6 from 49
Powerballs and bonus balls
Minimum number of tickets for a match
Information theoretic results
References
External links
Choosing 6 from 49
In a typical 6/49 game, each player chooses six distinct numbers from a range of 1-49. If the six numbers
on a ticket match the numbers drawn by the lottery, the ticket holder is a jackpot winner—regardless of
the order of the numbers. The probability of this happening is 1 in 13,983,816.
The chance of winning can be demonstrated as follows: The first number drawn has a 1 in 49 chance of
matching. When the draw comes to the second number, there are now only 48 balls left in the bag,
because the balls are drawn without replacement. So there is now a 1 in 48 chance of predicting this
number.
Thus for each of the 49 ways of choosing the first number there are 48 different ways of choosing the
second. This means that the probability of correctly predicting 2 numbers drawn from 49 in the correct
order is calculated as 1 in 49 × 48. On drawing the third number there are only 47 ways of choosing the
number; but of course we could have arrived at this point in any of 49 × 48 ways, so the chances of
correctly predicting 3 numbers drawn from 49, again in the correct order, is 1 in 49 × 48 × 47. This
continues until the sixth number has been drawn, giving the final calculation, 49 × 48 × 47 × 46 × 45 ×
44, which can also be written as or 49 factorial divided by 43 factorial. This works out to
10,068,347,520, which is much bigger than the ~14 million stated above.
However; the order of the 6 numbers is not significant. That is, if a ticket has the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
and 6, it wins as long as all the numbers 1 through 6 are drawn, no matter what order they come out in.
Accordingly, given any set of 6 numbers, there are 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 6! or 720 orders in which they
could be drawn. Dividing 10,068,347,520 by 720 gives 13,983,816, also written as , or
more generally as
, where n is the number of alternatives and k is the number of choices. Further
This function is called the combination function; in Microsoft Excel, this function is implemented as
COMBIN(n, k). For example, COMBIN(49, 6) (the calculation shown above), would return 13,983,816.
For the rest of this article, we will use the notation . "Combination" means the group of numbers
An alternative method of calculating the odds is to note that the probability of the first ball
corresponding to one of the six chosen is 6/49; the probability of the second ball corresponding to one of
the remaining five chosen is 5/48; and so on. This yields a final formula of
The range of possible combinations for a given lottery can be referred to as the "number space".
"Coverage" is the percentage of a lottery's number space that is in play for a given drawing.
select the winning numbers multiplied by the number of ways to select the losing numbers.
For a score of n (for example, if 3 choices match three of the 6 balls drawn, then n = 3), describes
the odds of selecting n winning numbers from the 6 winning numbers. This means that there are 6 - n
losing numbers, which are chosen from the 43 losing numbers in ways. The total number of
combinations giving that result is, as stated above, the first number multiplied by the second. The
expression is therefore .
5, bonus not
0.0000180208 55,491.33
won
Where more than 1 powerball is drawn from a separate pool of balls to the main lottery (for example, in
the EuroMillions game), the odds of the different possible powerball matching scores are calculated
using the method shown in the "other scores" section above (in other words, the powerballs are like a
mini-lottery in their own right), and then multiplied by the odds of achieving the required main-lottery
score.
If the powerball is drawn from the same pool of numbers as the main lottery, then, for a given target
score, the number of winning combinations includes the powerball. For games based on the Canadian
lottery (such as the lottery of the United Kingdom), after the 6 main balls are drawn, an extra ball is
drawn from the same pool of balls, and this becomes the powerball (or "bonus ball"). An extra prize is
given for matching 5 balls and the bonus ball. As described in the "other scores" section above, the
number of ways one can obtain a score of 5 from a single ticket is . Since the number of
1
remaining balls is 43, and the ticket has 1 unmatched number remaining, 43 of these 258 combinations
will match the next ball drawn (the powerball), leaving 258/43 = 6 ways of achieving it. Therefore, the
odds of getting a score of 5 and the powerball are .
Of the 258 combinations that match 5 of the main 6 balls, in 42/43 of them the remaining number will
Using the same principle, the odds of getting a score of 2 and the powerball are for
the score of 2 multiplied by the probability of one of the remaining four numbers matching the bonus
ball, which is 4/43. Since , the probability of obtaining the score of 2 and the
bonus ball is , approximate decimal odds of 1 in 81.2.
The general formula for matching balls in a choose lottery with one bonus ball from the pool
of balls is:
The general formula for matching balls in a choose lottery with zero bonus ball from the pool
of balls is:
The general formula for matching balls in a choose lottery with one bonus ball from a separate
pool of balls is:
The general formula for matching balls in a choose lottery with no bonus ball from a separate
pool of balls is:
shannons or bits of information. (See units of information for further explanation of terminology.) The
information content of losing is
The information entropy of a lottery probability distribution is also easy to calculate as the expected
value of the information content.
Oftentimes the random variable of interest in the lottery is a Bernoulli trial. In this case, the Bernoulli
entropy function may be used. Using representing winning the 6-of-49 lottery, the Shannon entropy
of 6-of-49 above is
References
1. Zabrocki, Mike (2003-03-01). "Calculating the Probabilities of Winning Lotto 6/49,Version 3" (http://ga
rsia.math.yorku.ca/~zabrocki/math5020f03/lot649/lot649v3.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved 2016-08-14.
2. Z. Füredi, G. J. Székely, and Z. Zubor (1996). "On the lottery problem". Journal of Combinatorial
Designs. 4 (1): 5–10. doi:10.1002/(sici)1520-6610(1996)4:1<5::aid-jcd2>3.3.co;2-w (https://doi.org/1
0.1002%2F%28sici%291520-6610%281996%294%3A1%3C5%3A%3Aaid-jcd2%3E3.3.co%3B2-w).
[1] (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6610(1996)4:1%3C5::AID-JCD2%3E3.0.C
O;2-J/abstract)
External links
Euler's Analysis of the Genoese Lottery (http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/convergence/eu
lers-analysis-of-the-genoese-lottery-introduction) at Convergence (https://web.archive.org/web/20070
713083148/http://mathdl.maa.org/convergence/1/)
Lottery Mathematics (http://probability.infarom.ro/lottery.html)
13,983,816 and the Lottery (http://www.numberphile.com/videos/lottery.html) (James Clewett) –
Numberphile, by Brady Haran (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute)
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