Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Best out of 1,000,000 draws

Step 1: Find some odds of each number being drawn.

Using Powerball's system of randomly drawing five white balls (numbered 1-55) and
one red ball (numbered 1-42), I simulated one million draws. Here are the results (the number in [] is the ball number and the number after it is how many times it was one of the drawn balls):


WHITE:

    [22] => 91557
[30] => 91404
[39] => 91285
[3] => 91278
[36] => 91258
[29] => 91228
[49] => 91152
[1] => 91152
[51] => 91146
[28] => 91142
[15] => 91118
[47] => 91107
[17] => 91103
[2] => 91096
[27] => 91073
[11] => 91058
[26] => 91056
[41] => 91035
[21] => 91029
[20] => 91017
[24] => 91007
[18] => 91000
[44] => 90999
[4] => 90987
[12] => 90986
[13] => 90956
[38] => 90947
[5] => 90946
[10] => 90934
[8] => 90924
[6] => 90920
[40] => 90909
[25] => 90893
[48] => 90887
[53] => 90871
[35] => 90856
[14] => 90835
[54] => 90801
[37] => 90742
[33] => 90718
[45] => 90708
[19] => 90698
[43] => 90675
[16] => 90664
[50] => 90650
[46] => 90645
[32] => 90624
[52] => 90606
[31] => 90597
[9] => 90589
[7] => 90581
[42] => 90467
[55] => 90459
[23] => 90371
[34] => 90254


RED:
    [24] => 24117
[23] => 24109
[18] => 24003
[12] => 23998
[42] => 23990
[16] => 23982
[28] => 23976
[35] => 23954
[9] => 23943
[6] => 23943
[15] => 23933
[1] => 23923
[8] => 23922
[5] => 23919
[22] => 23917
[30] => 23909
[39] => 23885
[33] => 23882
[34] => 23868
[38] => 23853
[36] => 23813
[40] => 23807
[11] => 23805
[27] => 23800
[32] => 23787
[3] => 23760
[7] => 23754
[17] => 23741
[25] => 23739
[29] => 23735
[10] => 23729
[41] => 23706
[13] => 23689
[2] => 23666
[20] => 23658
[14] => 23647
[19] => 23626
[26] => 23550
[21] => 23534
[31] => 23534
[37] => 23470
[4] => 23424

So if we were to just bet on the above figures, we would play:
white: 22, 30, 39, 3, 36
red: 24

In the last 2 games, I would have gotten 1 number each if I had bought 1 line per game with these numbers. That wins $0. Clearly, there are more numbers to crunch.

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