How to win big on the lottery

So what were you reading over your muesli and beetroot juice this morning? Me? Well, I was delighted to find our postie had brought the new issue of the Royal Statistical Society’s Journal Series A: Statistics in Society. As dry as a bowl of milk-less wheat biscuits you might think. Sometimes. But not this one. Not only does it offer sage advice on the uselessness of school league tables when considering future schooling (more on that later) but it also tells you how to win big on the lottery.

Here’s the paper:

Modelling the probability distribution of prize winnings in the UK National Lottery: consequences of conscious selection by R. D. Baker and I. G. McHale

And what does it say? Well in amongst some quite hard stats are some little gems. Why, for example on January 21st, 1999,  were there 133 winners of the jackpot prize? Because the winning numbers formed the shape of the letter ‘L’ on the ticket. People don’t choose their numbers at random… Oh no, they choose numbers they like or that form the shapes they like. House numbers and birthdays are favourites. And birth days (and their months) are less than 32. Plus people stick with these numbers – in case they come up next time. Even though the chance of any given number coming up is the same as any other number. The overall effect of this ‘conscious selection’ is many more shared wins AND many more jackpot roll-overs – because people tend to choose smaller numbers or particular combinations of numbers non-randomly.

So how does all this help us win big?

Well, using information from 1192 lottery draws between March 1996 (when lucky dip started) and January 2008 Baker and McHale show that the numbers people choose least are 35, 37, 41, 45, 46 and 49. So whilst choosing those numbers will not affect your chances of winning (which as you know so well are incredibly small), if you win, you win big. Because? Because you are much less likely to share the winnings.

As Baker and McHale point out it would also help to know which combinations of numbers are less popular but unfortunately they don’t have enough data, nor probably enough computing power to say.

But what of Lucky Dips? Indeed, clever clogs you have rightly concluded that if the computer randomly chooses your numbers (and as far as anyone knows it really does) you have a better chance of winning a larger share of the pot. Welcome to the world of good stats.