Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Playing the same numbers.

I know a few people who go to the convenience store twice a week and play the same numbers over and over again. Could this be a good strategy? The odds say know, but I figured I'd run some of my own tests using the numbers chosen from the previous post. I ran tests for 1 game, 10 games, 100, 1,000, and so on to measure the odds over time. Here's the results:

You played 1 games costing you $1 and you won back $0.
You played 10 games costing you $10 and you won back $0.
You played 100 games costing you $100 and you won back $6.
You played 1,000 games costing you $1,000 and you won back $125.
You played 10,000 games costing you $10,000 and you won back $1,089.
You played 100,000 games costing you $100,000 and you won back $21,613.
You played 1,000,000 games costing you $1,000,000 and you won back $324,431.
You played 10,000,000 games costing you $10,000,000 and you won back $2,019,222.

We can see from these numbers why people say that the lottery is a game for people who aren't good at math. I remain determined to improve upon this, but it's late, so I'll jump back in with another method later.

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