/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.6343494]

Who plays the lottery here? Any strategies?
>inb4 strike of lightning while fishing in winter.

[Anonymous No.6343497]

How could there possibly be a strategy for that?

I have heard of mathematicians exploiting scratch tickets though.

[Anonymous No.6343502]

>>6343494
>any strategies?
Hahahaha wut

[Anonymous No.6343508]

[Anonymous No.6343511]

>>6343497
Given that the results aren't predetermined, they are produced by an algorithm. I'm curious what company is responsible for running lotteries. They all cant be institutions with contractors responsible for picking winning numbers.

[Anonymous No.6343523]

>>6343508
+1

[Anonymous No.6343532]

>>6343494
strike of fish while lightning in water

[Anonymous No.6343544]

This is science a child can understand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f3BbTOqDNw

[Anonymous No.6343552]

>>6343544
>those sound effects

[Anonymous No.6343559]

there are no strategies. the payoff is not mathematically fair. the only way to increase your chances of winning is buying more tickets.

[Anonymous No.6343569]

save up money while prize pool is low, buy a lot when the jackpot is high.

[Anonymous No.6343574]

choose one combination and stick to it, don't play random generated numbers nor randomly picking everytime.

[Anonymous No.6343582]

>>6343574
this/100

[Anonymous No.6343601]

1. find a lottery system with exploitable holes

2. exploit them

Here's some examples
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/31/a_lottery_game_with_a_windfall_for_a_knowing_few/

[Anonymous No.6343603]

>>6343494
>Any strategies?

Nothing will help you win numbers correctly.

If you plan on playing Lotto, here's few tips:

1) Pick numbers that are not your regular "birthday numbers". When people pick numbers, they pick birthday numbers (heir own and from family) so include some numbers higher than 31. This is important because it will minimize the chance that you need to split the winnings with someone! If you're gonna win, at least be the sole winner.

2) Always play the same numbers.

3) Never miss a week. Most lotteries allow you to buy a subscription which will also give you a discount.

That's it really.

I'm a math grad student and I play lottery. I know the odds of winning and I'm OK with that. For the cost that's less than a price of Starbucks coffee, I have a chance of winning millions. I don't gamble, don't have any vices and I see this as a low-cost way to maybe become rich.

Other than solving one of the Clay problems, I don't know an easier way of making millions.

[Anonymous No.6343605]

>>6343603
How much do you spend a year on lottery tickets?

[Anonymous No.6343606]

>>6343603

>I see this as a low-cost way to maybe become rich.

More like a low-cost way to losing money slowly.

[Anonymous No.6343617]

>>6343494
I occasionally get some scratch-offs for Christmas and have played once or twice when the powerball was really high. It's only for fun, if you ever play the lottery with serious expectations to win anything than you're doing it wrong. The odds are astronomically stacked against you.

Frankly I'm happy if I win $10 on a scratch off.

[Anonymous No.6343624]

>>6343605
>How much do you spend a year on lottery tickets?

Given that the ticket is $2, I spend about $104 / year.

>>6343606
>More like a low-cost way to losing money slowly.

Do you buy an energy drink at a gas/convenience story? How about a pack of gum? You lose money on that shit too.

Can you tell me an easier way to win $5m+ with $100 yearly investment? People spend more on fucking sneakers.

[Anonymous No.6343630]

>>6343603
>I play lottery
>I don't gamble

[Anonymous No.6343629]

>>6343624
>Can you tell me an easier way to win $5m+ with $100 yearly investment?
Spend every weekend at the pub in hoping that you'll meet an eccentric rich old bachelor who takes a liking to you and names you as his inheritor

[Anonymous No.6343633]

>>6343624

yeah but at least I derive some utility from that energy drink or stick of gum.

[Anonymous No.6343632]

>>6343605
I spend $10 a week for one set of random numbers for two draws. Lotto Max. Random has more wins, and why give up on a set of numbers after one draw?

[Anonymous No.6343637]

>>6343632
That's $500 a year

[Anonymous No.6343642]

>>6343637
Watch out guys we got a mathmatician over here

[Anonymous No.6343644]

>>6343624
At least I have something I can enjoy when I buy a drink or nice shoes. When you lose the lottery every time, you have nothing. That money could've been put to better use.

[Anonymous No.6343647]

>>6343637
I make $800 a week.

[Anonymous No.6343653]

>>6343644
>At least I have something I can enjoy when I buy a drink or nice shoes. When you lose the lottery every time, you have nothing. That money could've been put to better use.

I enjoy the feeling of knowing that I might hit the jackpot one day!

And you know what, in 3 years that I've been playing lotto, I must have won over $150 in smaller prizes. That means it cost me roughly $150 to play for 3 years.

To me, it's worth it.

[Anonymous No.6343663]

>>6343630
>>I play lottery
>>I don't gamble

How many people who plat lotto have a gambling addiction? How many people have lost heir jobs, houses, family over lotto gambling addiction?


Lotto has absolutely the worst gambling addiction psychology since the reinforcement schedule is spaced out for the period of years or decades.

You have a better chance of getting addicted to buying new cars than buying lotto tickets.

[Anonymous No.6343688]

Gambling isn't always irrational even when the odds are against you. See, the marginal value of a dollar to a person isn't constant.

Let's say you have an opportunity to bet $10 on a 1% chance at winning $100. Terrible bet, right? Always wrong to make it?

Well, what if you only have $10, with no other opportunities to make or borrow $100, and you urgently need to spend $100 to survive or to save some asset worth over $1000 to you? You may never have been in this sort of situation, but they pop up sometimes.

How much would it change your life to become independently wealthy next week? Do you have any better chance of doing it other than winning a lottery? Maybe you're insensitive to the difference in standard of living you can buy with a few extra dollars per week, but lust after a free and luxurious life to such an extreme that any miniscule probability of gaining it is important to you.

Another situation where it's rational to gamble against the odds is if you have no secure way to save money. In this sort of situation, it can be a substitute for saving. Let's say you're a street urchin in a third-world country, surrounded by others like you who will steal anything you try to save within a few days of you starting to save it. Gambling what you lay your hands on, even with unfavorable casino odds, can gain you the lump sum you need to escape your situation nearly as fast on average as if you had a way to save it.

[Anonymous No.6343689]

How many total combinations are there?

Could the lottery ever be high enough that you could play every single combination and be guaranteed to make money?

[Anonymous No.6343692]

>>6343689
>Could the lottery ever be high enough that you could play every single combination and be guaranteed to make money?

That actually happened few times and some people bought up almost all of the tickers and won.

[Anonymous No.6343693]

>>6343689
>How many total combinations are there?
Depends on the lottery.

>Could the lottery ever be high enough that you could play every single combination and be guaranteed to make money?
Yes, this happens sometimes. However, there is a risk that you'll fail to buy all of the tickets needed, and also a risk that you'll end up splitting the lottery (especially since other people can get the same idea).

[Anonymous No.6343704]

>>6343494
buy all the tickets, you will probably win.

[Anonymous No.6343711]

>>6343692
know of any cases where that happened? I'd like to read about them

[Anonymous No.6343727]

>>6343711
>know of any cases where that happened? I'd like to read about them
Here's one that I remembered and could easily find:

>In 1992 an Australian gambling syndicate bought almost all the combinations in a Virginia lottery and won, turning a $5M purchase into a $27M winnings

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

There's few other success stories of people that did similar things. There's also an infamous story of some chinese dude who bought $1m in tickets and didn't win.

[Anonymous No.6343792]

I usually just buy autoselect/quickpick numbers, because I feel that its more likely that a set of numbers selected by a random computer will cross paths with the numbers chosen by random ball movement than numbers I personally select within my lifetime.

[Anonymous No.6344283]

>>6343704
Buying up the tickets is one way, another is identifying what company is responsible for running lottery and infiltrating their system.

>>6343511
I too have a theory that the numbers are predetermined before the draw. Factors include number of sales, number of bonus sold, and average tickets sold at retailers.