This is the fifth article in the Lotto Lies series. There are many who believe that there are no lottery number patterns or trends. Therefore, using a computer for lottery number analysis is a waste of time. After all, the lottery is a random game of chance. Right? How is it possible that there are trends? 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.
Lotto Lie No. 5 – There are no lottery trends.
Alright, let’s look for 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 of 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 the history of winning numbers for weeks and just hope to find that bottle of Motrin.
If we are going to look for lottery trends, we will need some prospecting tools. This 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 each draw in the lottery history, we will select 5 numbers at random and compare them to the winning numbers and see how well we did it. If two of our numbers were winners, we would plot a 2 on our graph for that drawing. If none of our numbers were a winner, 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 point on the graph represents how we did it in 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 drawing. We can use this as a figure of merit. We could compare other number selection techniques to this figure of merit to see if we did better or worse than random number selection.
What should this average number of hits per drawing 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, in the long run, we will average 8.9% x 5 correct picks per drawing or 0.45 average Hits per drawing. The average hits per drawing 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 number of correct answers per drawing, 0.45. Now we can compare the lottery trends we discovered against 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 number of views per draw greater than 0.45, we are correct.
AHA! A trend.
So are there trends like this? And, if they do, how good are they? The answer to the first question is: “Yes, in every lottery, every day.” The answer to the second question is: “Much better than you might expect.” We are not talking about a negligible 1% or 2% improvement over the 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 are talking about a 15% to 30% improvement.
Are you excited yet? Let’s take a look at 194 Mega Millions 5/56 lottery draws from 04/01/11 to 09/11/12. As we look for lottery trends, we look for numbers that are making a comeback in some statistically influential way. In other words, we are looking back at the 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 essential 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 food or drink, when you finally complete the analysis, the train has already left the station.
The cycles will take you around
Cycle 13 has been the best of the Mega Millions lottery. Cycle 13 identifies a place to look in the history of the lottery. That place is 13 pictures ago. By always going there to find 5 numbers to play, instead of randomly selecting them, you would have gotten an average of 0.56 winning numbers per draw instead of 0.45. That’s an incredible 24% improvement! This is an obvious trend that is statistically relevant and cannot be ignored. Cycle 3 was a second close to 0.55.
But that is not all. Without realizing it was a bad choice, suppose you always selected your numbers from eight pictures ago; Cycle 8. Unfortunately, it only produced an average of 0.36 winning numbers per draw. Cycle 13 outperformed Cycle 8 by 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 choosing your lottery numbers?
In any other game of chance, an advantage of 24% to 55.5% will bring a big smile to any player’s face. This does not mean that cycle 13 has always produced winners. But it does mean that, over time, he has been the best producer of winning numbers.
I can hear the skeptics out there right now, jumping up and down, saying, “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he’ll still be the best.” True, but these trends have what I call Persistence. They do not appear overnight or disappear tomorrow. Cycles 13 and 3 were among the top ten drawings of Cycles 50 ago (drawing 144). That means they have been two of the best choices for the last 50 drawings.
So if you’re going to play the hardest game in the world, you have to take advantage of everything your lottery has to offer. Does this mean that you are going to win the lottery? Not at all. There is much more to it. This is just a simple example to calm naysayers, skeptics, and critics who try to insist that lottery number analysis is a waste of time and that there are no lottery number patterns or trends. Now, to join the ranks of serious lottery players, you will need a computer and a quality lottery software program.
Look for the sixth article in the Lotto Lies series; “Best Lottery Tip: I don’t play the lottery because that’s gambling.”