Is Lotto rigged?
Stuff seems to think so (via a Stat of the Week nomination)
If you plan to celebrate 25 years of Lotto with a ticket for tonight’s Big Wednesday draw, some outlets offer better odds than others.
No, they don’t. They offer the same odds, roughly zero. Some outlets have sold more winning tickets than others in the past, that’s all.
Many people, even statisticians, enjoy playing Lotto. If you want to buy tickets at places where other people have won in the past, there’s nothing wrong with that and it won’t hurt your chances. Since many people enjoy playing, it makes some sense for newspapers to write about Lotto from time to time. But there’s no excuse for leading with a blatantly untrue statement.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Hi Thomas,
My reply is irrelevant to your topic here. I just wonder if you know something about the statistical methods in the detection of sport dopping. Here is the latest article on Nature.
http://www.nature.com/news/why-great-olympic-feats-raise-suspicions-1.11109
The author mentions “Longitudinal records of athletes’ performances would then be fed into statistical models to determine the likelihood that they ran or swam too fast, given their past results and the limits of human physiology.”
Have you had a chance to think about this problem (and maybe write an article about it)?
Cheers,
Sammie
12 years ago
Hi,
How come we dont see younger people winning lotto?but only older people…that cant be a coincidence…
11 years ago
Younger than what? About 75% of NZ adults are over 40.
11 years ago