January 14, 2013
More about Lotto numbers …
From today’s New Zealand Herald:
Five Lotto numbers prove very lucky
Two Saturdays in a row, five of the same numbers were drawn in Lotto.
But a statistician says the chances of that happening aren’t as high as they may seem – 1 in 5500 ….
Said statistician is our very own Russell Millar. The rest of the story is here …
Atakohu Middleton is an Auckland journalist with a keen interest in the way the media uses/abuses data. She happens to be married to a statistician. See all posts by Atakohu Middleton »
It should probably say “the chances of that happening aren’t as *low* as they may seem”.
In any event, the relevant question is whether this is informative about future events. The answer is of course no, and the reason is prior information about the symmetries in the physics of lotto draws!
I suppose that’s what the article is getting at when it says the balls don’t have a memory.
11 years ago