The Squid Zone

Picking Lottery Numbers - Part 2

This is one of the most popular articles on my blog, based on the referral hits I get: Picking Lottery Numbers.  The topic is very popular with users of nearly every search engine.  Because of this, I thought I would take the opportunity to expand a bit on the original article.

If you don't want to hit the link and read the article from 14 Jan, 2009, I'll summarize here:  A lottery is a random drawing, and it doesn't matter which numbers you pick.  In fact, the "patterns" that people see are assigned solely by one's own brain.  If they took the numbers off the balls and just put random pictures of granite from a quarry, so there was no discernable mathematical pattern to the figures on the balls (or lots, or whatever they use to make the draw), people would probably not waste so much brain power trying to figure out the "best" pattern.

In fact, picking 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 as your numbers for a pick-7 style of lottery is just as good as any other set of numbers, and that other article shows this by way of the chart for the old Super-7 lottery here in Canada.

Because people keep searching and hitting that article, I have had the opportunity to look at the search terms people use and have come up with a series of informational bulletins that, I hope, will impart a bit of knowledge about lotteries in general and how to pick the best numbers.

Lottery Fact 1: The only way to win, is not to play the game

WOPR realized that in Wargames and the world was saved from nuclear destruction.  It's a fact, that the best bet you can make on a lottery is not to play at all.  If you look at the chart of Super-7 winnings from the previous article, you can see that the numbers selected would have won a cash prize of $10 a few times (the match-4 and match 3+bonus), and a stack of free tickets.  If we assume that a player saves his money and only plays the free ticket, the maximum win for the entire life of the chart is $710 over a bit more than 13 years.

Statistically, that's about what you can expect from such a lottery.  Yes, you could win the jackpot, but your odds are vanishingly small.  Still, there's a chance (about 1:75000 over the time in the example), so let's add 1/75000 of a typical jackpot of 25 million to the pile just so that the lottery is presented in the best statistical light.  Your total expectation of winnings would therefore be $710 plus $333.33, or $1043.33... let's call it $1100 for a round number.  That's the simple reality... over 13 years you can EXPECT to pocket somewhere around $1100 on a pick-7 lottery.

For that, you will have paid $2 per week for 13 years: $1352, a net loss of somewhere between $250 and $640.  Not a good investment.  In fact, if you invested $2 a week at a mere 2% over that whole time, it would mature at about $1500 over the same time... and that's at a pathetic rate of return.

Lottery Fact 2: But somebody has to win!

You might think that, but you'd be wrong.  That's why most lotteries have a progressive jackpot - nobody must win, and they often don't give away the jackpot each draw.  It (or a portion of it) gets lumped in the next week.  That makes the next jackpot bigger causing people to buy more tickets in the deluded hope that they can win.  Of course, with more tickets sold, the odds that someone will win increase, but since the jackpot is also split, so too do the odds increase that the jackpot will be split and thus be less to each winner.

A lottery is not like a school-yard raffle or a bingo game.  Nobody must win, but the vast majority absolutely must lose.

Lottery Fact 3: I saw a thing on the web about a math student/psychic/software user who wins big

The technical term for what you saw is bullshit, although I'll qualify that a little.

There have been lotteries that have come out with mathematical problems.  It is possible, if you have the math skills and the financial backing, to score those lotteries.  However, once flawed lotteries are discovered, they are shut down immediately.  Thus, your window of opportunity is VERY small, and it only applies to new lotteries.  It's fair to say that any established lottery very likely does not have such a flaw.  At the end of the day, any lottery is a business and if the business is flawed it dies.  A flawed lottery would simply go bankrupt very quickly, especially once word got around.  So if you have the mathematical chops, feel free to try and beat the system on new lotteries, but odds are you'd be wasting your time.

Psychics and astrologers don't win big in lotteries.  If they did, the richest people in the would would not be the Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, they'd be Sylvia Browne and Uri Geller.  If it comes out of the mouth of a psychic or astrologer, you can bank on it being bullshit.  Enough said on that.

Now, many lotteries use a system of numbered balls that are bounced about in a machine and allowed to drop, forming the draw.  There are many software programs out there that will analyze the drops and look for trends.  The information is typically available from the lottery web site anyway, so the software really just downloads the info and saves you the trouble of learning the math to do the analysis yourself.  But does this analysis work?  Certainly you can find plenty of marketing claims that it does... but if it works so well, where are the lottery quadrillionaires topping the list of the world's richest people?  The truth is, analyzing past draws to predict future outcome doesn't work.  If it did, the game would be flawed and would go bankrupt quickly.  

The ball-based lotteries replace the balls regularly.  Thus, even if there are tiny variations in weight or shape that might affect the outcome over a large number of draws, any given ball doesn't stay in play long enough to affect the outcome in any serious way.  Similarly, the balls have no "memory" so any given number is just as likely to come up next week as it is this week as it was last week.  Past results do not affect future outcome... this should be every gambler's mantra, and if you can't or won't understand that, just mail me your money because it will be the same net result for you and at least you'll have the pleasure of knowing SOMEONE will be made happy.

OK smart guy, I know you play lotteries and I know you win

It's true, I play 'em, and it seems like I win.  Of course, you don't see me lose... because I don't mention it when I lose.  I win no more than anyone else, but when I win there might be a coffee for my friends or maybe a beer if that's more appropriate to the size of the winning.  

I consider lottery playing to be entertainment and nothing more.  It comes out of my entertainment budget, from discretionary spending.  Winnings go back into the entertainment budget.  On the balance, all my lottery playing has been a net loss by a long shot.  I consider playing the lottery to be "stupid spending" like playing the games at a carnival...  mildly fun, but I know I'm getting it in the rear just by putting my money in.

Whatever... How do you pick your numbers?

Well, I often pick the first n-numbers required (1,2,3,4,5,6,7 on a pick-7; 1,2,3,4,5,6 on a pick-6 and so forth).  If I am feeling creative, I try to draw a little picture on the fill-in-the-squares slip, although it's hard with only 5-7 "pixels".  Sometimes I start at one corner of the pick-box and make little knight's-moves (up 2, over 1; or up 1, over 2)  moving around the chessboard of the pick sheet.  If I'm feeling lazy, I just get a quick-pick.  It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

Summary: How to pick your lottery numbers

The best bet - Don't pick any numbers.  Don't buy a ticket.  Save your money.

Going to play anyway - It doesn't matter how you pick them.  Wing it... picking is part of the fun of playing.  Definitely don't pay anyone else money for software, psychic reading or any of that crap.  Playing a lottery is a waste of money, but paying some nimrod money to pick numbers for you is something even Forrest Gump would be ashamed of...

Play "Hallowe'en Squid"

I was checking in over at Squid a Day as I often do and today they had a link to Max Games.  Max Games writes little flash games for the internet, and the current game is Hallowe'en Squid!  Can you snare all the candy while avoiding the children?

[edit: I removed the game, the music was really annoying to load weeks after Hallowe'en]

Visit Max Games for your internet time-wasting needs :)

Don't trust anyone you meet online, you could regret it!

Here's a public service announcement...

By way of Wil Wheaton's blog, by way of Ken.

Customer Service, Part N... Online Gaming.

I was noticing today that EVE Online, the game I currently play, is back up on time at the end of some maintenance.  It got me to thinking a couple of things about how they handle their game.

First, their daily maintenance window is normally 1100-1200 UTC - that's really only in the peak play hours for central Russia, Afghanistan and so forth.  In effect, very few of their players are likely to be burned for the play time they pay for due to maintenance.

Second, even though I've played for about 8 months spread over about 18 months on the calendar, I have yet to see them overshoot a downtime window.  If they say they'll be back up at 1200 UTC, I have ALWAYS been able to log back in at 1200 UTC - sometimes before that.

Third, when the game has to be brought down for emergency maintenance, big patches, and so forth, it has always come back up by the announced time.  Always.  And again, this kind of maintenance is done at a time that inconveniences what I am certain is the least number of customers.

Contrast this with Sony, the overlords of the Everquest series of games and Vanguard.  Everquest maintenance times were typically in the peak play hours of Europe, burning thousands of customers on a regular basis.  Sony usually hit the daily maintenance window timings... usually... but only very rarely hit their estimated times for patches and other maintenance, leaving customers stranded with no game for hours with no explanation.  Despite repeated complaints, Sony would say that it was impossible to give accurate up and down times, and impossible to schedule maintenance so it wouldn't inconvenience huge numbers of customers.

Having played EVE, I now feel 100% confident calling bullshit on that (ok,I was 95% confident before, but now I have evidence).  As I knew all along, it's clearly feasible to schedule maintenance to be inconvenient to a relatively small number of people and it's quite possible to estimate time properly.  I suspect much of the difference here is that EVE is run out of Europe, and Sony runs Everquest out of the United States.  Europeans, it appears, understand that their money is coming from a global customer base, whereas the Americans only see the USA and consider the rest of the world to be an inconvenience that drags them down.  Or maybe they're just too lazy to have their maintenance team work from 3 AM - 4 AM Pacific time, or maybe from 8 PM - 9 PM Pacific (which would hit those peak, after-work hours in the middle of the Pacific Ocean).  It's not like this was never suggested to them.

Anyway, that's the rant for today.  Kudos to CCP for running a tight ship.  Big Sony could learn something from them.

This does capture the reality of so many MMOs

It's from The Guild

Enjoy!

I finally got to the end (more or less) of Spore

I bought Spore last year through my Steam account.  It was, in fact, the first game I ever purchased on the direct-to-drive system, as opposed to buying a boxed set.

If you've never heard of Spore, it is played as follows:

You start as a cell in the primordial pond.  You can't even customize your looks initially, although you can in very short order.  You eat to collect/grow DNA, and you find meteor parts to gain potential body-parts.  You can build your food-eating and attack/defence abilities until you gain enough DNA to become a critter.  This takes 10-20 minutes depending on how fast you are figuring out efficient movement, and how close you start to the multi-eyed, mega-mouthed monstrosities that seem to be nearby about half the time.  Choices you make in this stage affect the next stage.

My most recent creature, freshly evolved and out of the pond.

You then grow legs and leave the pond.  As a creature you have a nest, and you run around eating, hunting, and making friends with the other creatures on your continent.  In so doing, you find other DNA which allows you to mutate into a more powerful creature.  As you progress, your brain power grows and eventually you become sentient.  You can rush through this phase in about 30 minutes, but if you spend an hour or two, you can collect the bulk of the body modifications and be pretty uber.  In general, it's worth it to not be a minimalist here.  Once again, choices you make as a creature affect the next stage.

Mastered my territory, ready to form a tribe

When you become sentient you form a tribe.  The little video between the previous stage and this one is funny, and if you've ever seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you've had the very same thought that is portrayed in this video, I guarantee it.  As a tribe your goal is to gather food, grow your village, and ally with or conquer your neighbours.  The first few times I played this, I found it took a long time, but I seem to be able to ace it in about an hour.  In this stage, clothes make the (whatever) and you develop various clothing ideas from your own brain power and as gifts or plunder from neighbouring tribes.  Eventually you will conquer the other tribes and unite your people into a civilization.  Choices you make here affect your civilization in the future.

Full tribal regalia, ready to advance to civilization

At this stage, you own the world, but your civilization will be split into competing factions.  Superficially, this part of the game works like a simplified version of the game Civilization with less resource management.  Your goal is to overcome all your factions and make a people united under one (your) government.  I did this in about an hour with the critters pictured here playing as a religious nutbag shaman and using a super-weapon.  I've done it militarily in the past, but that seems to take longer.  When the planet is united, you will develop space travel and make the journey to the stars!

My spaceship, ready to rock(et)

So, if you've read this far, you've seen that you can get from cell to space travel in about 3-5 hours depending on how efficient you are and how much time you spend dawdling in the various creature, building and vehicle creators.  That's not bad for a game... but you're not done yet and we're actually at the point of this post.

I bought the game back in December and noticed that I didn't have a "completed" game, so I started fresh Sunday night.  Monday morning, I hit the space stage.  Cool.  What I didn't realize (perhaps because I bought a direct-to-drive version and thus didn't have a manual) is that to get to the "end" of the space stage requires 275 command points.  Command points are acquired by completing in-game certifications through missions, conquest, trade, and archaeology.  It's a HUGE amount of work that seems to take hours and hours.  Monday morning I hit space.  I sunk no less than 16 hours in between then and the wee hours of this morning when I finally filled in the last evolution bar.  And this was on EASY, presumably it would take longer across the board if I played on a less sucky difficulty level.  It occurred to me, at last, why I don't play this game often: you can burn through the early stages but you NEVER finish the space stage.

Even when you get the 275 points, the game doesn't end... you can explore the galaxy, seemingly forever.  That's kind of cool, but I just don't have the attention span for that.  If I didn't have time off this summer, I'd never have seen the 275 points, let alone find out that it goes on forever.

Of course, the coolest part of the game is probably the creature creator.  You don't even have to play the game to play with the creator.  The creature creator allows you to build creatures (and buildings, and vehicles) and share them with the rest of the Spore world.  If you are playing "logged in" to the Spore servers, your creatures will show up as NPCs in other people's games and theirs will show up in yours - this is a very cool feature.  Also, creatures you've made (in the creator or from PREVIOUS GAME PLAYS) will show up in your own games as NPCs as well... so if you make the uber creature of ultimate death, recognize that you'll probably face him much sooner rather than later.

Each player who uses the online version has a few web pages.  You can view my creations here.  Most are from games, some are just from playing in the creature creator.

Anyway, so that's Spore.  I am not sure if I like it or not.  It's certainly got some fun aspects, but that final step... ugh.  At least now I remember why I stopped playing it in the winter.

The Water of Life

Deep down, I knew this to be true... Coffee is good for you! I guess computer geeks are going to live forever.

Thanks to Trashy's World for pointing this out, and finding that great poster.

The 6th picture in your screenshot directory

This is a meme inherited from Random Ogre Thoughts.  The idea is to post the 6th picture in your favourite MMO's screenshot directory.  Since Vanguard numbers them starting with 00000, here is Screenshot_00005 (click for full size 1920 x 1200):

It's a picture of the town of Tar Janashir while I was apparently flying or floating.

The theory of this is that I'm supposed to tag other people who do this... but I don't know any.  The only other MMO player I know is Paul.  However... muhahah... if you read this, and play MMOs, consider yourself tagged, lest my cephalopod minions be sent for you.

(photo from Cephalopods: A world guide)

Guitar Heroes for Jesus

I'm not really sure what to think of this, so I'll just throw it out there...

It's a Guitar Hero clone for Christian Rockers... no sex, no drugs, no naughtiness.  You can read a bit about it here.

On the one hand, I'm not a fan of Christian rock... not because of the Jesus thing but because, in my experience, it's pretty universally bad.  Rock music is all about youthful rebellion, teen anger and disenchantment with the establishment.  These qualities are pretty much the opposite of ANY religion.   Rare would be the musician who could make a good rock tune with cuddles and smiles and Jesus, I would think.  On the other hand, it does seem there's no shortage of musicians taking a stab at it.  But I digress. 

If, however, it's something that might float your particular boat, well, here's a place that sells it.

A disturbing mental image?

Being male and pathologically unable to read instruction manuals, particularly GAME instructions, I found it necessary to get my friend's 10-year-old daughter to show me how to play Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii.  Beth wanted the thing but was also unable to puzzle out the game mechanics.  In any case, the little girl schooled us.  When nobody was around, I tried it for myself and actually did OK, considering that dancing has never really been my thing.

It was strangely fun, although I got an "E" on the lowest level, and didn't manage half the score that the little girl did yesterday.

On the flip side, I probably do better at Unreal Tournament than she would, so it all works out.