More Historic PowerBall Number Graphs

I have some more crunching to do, but here's some fun stuff in the interim.

First, a frequency chart of every white ball number drawn. Again, left to right represents recent draws to older ones.




Second, here's a little bit of information for those of you who have ever played a consecutive series of numbers (eg: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5). According to my checking against my number set, it appears that there has never been a full consecutive set of white balls drawn in the past 10 years.

Graphing Lottery Number Frequencies

Since just going by a statistical analysis of a randomly generated set of numbers seems to have failed miserably, I've decided to come back with another approach. This time, we'll take a look at how a random sampling of numbers looks on a graph and then how the previously chosen numbers look. What we're looking for here is any kind of pattern. The graphs aren't pretty because I'm worrying more about making the numbers work.

I started with a simple graphing of 500 white ball numbers chosen randomly:



I've run it a hundred times and it still doesn't reveal any amazing secret. No surprise there. But what about the actual selected PowerBall numbers? The following is a graphical representation of the actual Powerball numbers chosen for almost exactly the last 10 years of drawings (11.05.1997 - 10.31.2007). The numbers are from recent to oldest, left to right and in rows due to the large amount of data. Red lines represent the Power Ball numbers.



Here's just the Red (Power) Ball numbers for the last 10 years:



While this is still interesting at best, I will continue to play with it.

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.

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.

Introduction and Goals

Hi. My name is Joe and I am a fan of math. I'm also a fan of money, and I think I can use one to get the other. I'm 32 and in my time, I've seen math come into play just about everywhere. Lately, I've seen a lot of great examples of people using math to further their acheivements where you might not expect it (such as athletic competitions). I want to use math to win the lottery.

OK... I know... Everybody and their brother has tried all kinds of methods to increase their odds of winning. I'm not claiming to revolutionize the act of putting a buck on a lottery ticket and crossing your fingers. I also don't expect to win the jackpot. I just want to test some theories for fun. Yeah... I sound like a blast at parties, don't I?

So... How about the goals, then? I have a couple goals. First, I would like to generate a nice amount of data about the odds of winning using various methods for number selection and the odds of winning playing your same numbers over and over. Once I have all my data, I want to do some test runs without actually forking over any cash. If I come up with a reasonable amount of success, I then would like to put my theories to use with real cash.

From time to time, I will post methods, theories, and actual numbers. If you blow your paycheck based on this info, don't cry to me. However, if your drop a buck or two on a game and win anything worth bragging about, please comment about it in a post and tell a friend about my blog.

OK... Back to generating numbers. My first stats will be up shortly.

P.S. All my tests will use the Powerball as the lotto system of choice, since I'm in Arizona.