Thursday, December 23, 2010

Winning The Lotto With Statistics

Almost everyone loves to hear interesting facts and statistics. However, most of the time they are completely pointless in real life.There are many good examples of interesting facts and stats that are not very relevant to our everyday lives. Did you know, for example, that in 1985 the official NASA statistical probability for an accident to occur to a space shuttle was 100,000 to 1. After the Challenger disaster it is now 100 to 1!

So imagine how amazing it was to everyone (and how amazing it still is) when a guy used his $1000 lottery winnings to buy a ticket that won him $1 million! The odds of this happening are astronomical. Very lucky indeed.

Some time ago a famous New York paper reported on a working-class man who spent most of his hard earned money on lottery tickets.Unfortunately Mr. Ray Otero has the mistaken belief that his has a greater chance of winning a jackpot prize in a lottery by buying more tickets!

The truth is that, statistically, buying more tickets, that are chosen randomly and not using a mathematical system, does not increase your chances of winning a prize in the lottery at all!

It surprises many people to find out that lottery prizes are extremely hard to get. In fact if you buy a UK lottery ticket, which is a match 6 from 49 draw, at the beginning of the week there is a better chance of you dying before the draw than there is of you winning it!

This unfortunate statistic is true because you have a 14,000,000 to 1 chance of winning a jackpot on a 6 from 49 draw and the odds of being struck by lightning are killed by lightning are roughly 2650000 to 1.Every ticket you buy has the same odds of winning. Buying more tickets does not give you a better chance of winning.

Take heart though because you can do certain things that dramatically increase the odds of you winning a huge lottery prize and they don't require you to spend a fortune doing it! Lottery wheeling, for example, is a great way to increase your chances of winning a top prize on the lottery.

When you use a wheeling system the odds of winning a top prize are improved by millions to 1. When you add only one number to your pick (in a 6 from 49 lotto draw) you increase your chances of winning by millions, literally! Wheeling systems require you to invest more money in the lottery, because you must buy more tickets, but by doing so, and by doing it in a mathematically precise manner, you increase your chances of winning the lottery jackpot.

In the UK lottery just wheeling an extra number (so you pick 7 numbers instead of the standard 6) you reduce your odds of winning from 14,0000,000 to 1 to only 500,000 to 1!

So, if Mr. Otero had only played a 6 from 49, or similar type of lottery, and wheeled his numbers he may well be a very wealthy man by now.

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