| ??? 06/07/06 04:31 Read: times |
#117922 - Perhaps, but maybe not Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Craig Steiner said:
True, but the odds are higher that someone else will have also picked those numbers than any set of completely obscure, meaningless numbers. You don't have a lower chance of winning with 1-2-3-4-5-6, but you probably have a lower expected payout because of the number of people you'll have to share with. Now that the world (or at least this part of it) knows that a seemingly "non-random" sequence has the same chance of winning, you may be right about the expected payoff. On the other hand, people generally don't select completely obscure, meaningless numbers; they don't know how to pick a random sequence of numbers. One of my favorite stories for stat students is about the embezzlers in New York who got nailed because they didn't know about Benford's Law--but the attorney general of New York knew about it. They chose amounts for the checks they wrote that had about a one in a gazillion probability of being legitimate check amounts. The point being that numbers chosen based on one's birthday or other personal data is not at all random and has a significant probability of being picked by others for different, but equally personal, reasons. (Significant in the context of the lottery.) |
