Lottery wins

DaveMehmet

Bedsaddick said:

We got five numbers up a few years ago when i was on a shift . £1750 shared between 20 people. (£87 each ) The number we didn't get was 7 and we had number 5 . That would have pocketed us a share of 7 million. ( 350K each) i always wonder how many would have left if they got that much. 

Had a similar thing about 15 years ago. 4 of us got 5 numbers and shared £1,800. Our 6th number was one off the bonus ball, which from memory would have netted us about £400k each.

clb74

Gribbo said:

In theory, the chances of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 coming out, is the same as any other combination. That's what the bet is

Problem Is about 10000 people do 1-6.

lordromford

The problem with probability is that events are sometimes deceptively likely because you have to consider all the ways it could happen. It’s like the birthday problem where we all know that the chance of two people sharing a birthday is 1/365 (excluding leap years) but you only need 21 people for the chance of two people sharing a birthday to go above 50%.

The chance of two consecutive lottery draws being the same is highly unlikely, obviously. But then the chance of there having been two consecutive identical draws at any point and in any place becomes more and more likely the more lottery draws are held. If you have enough lottery draws, identical results eventually become inevitable.

You know how there was that one year when you bumped into a work colleague at a holiday resort or on a plane or maybe just somewhere really random and you both said “Oh my god! What are the chances?!” The answer is “Almost 100%” as long as you’re talking about the chance of seeing someone you know in some place you’ve been at some point in your life. Coincidences really aren’t all that unusual. 😎

Callumcafc

Spot on as well @lordromford - another good example of this laid out at 3:20 in this video: https://youtu.be/QW3KRaz4aI4


Believe the professor in the video is probably referring to the Sally Clark case? 

Convicted on the basis of improperly used statistics. True that it’s a one in 70 million chance that both her kids died of SIDS but fair more likely that it’ll happen to someone somewhere when you account for the entire population.