We’ve all dreamt about winning the lottery, millions instantly to your bank account, and what we would all do with the money. For those of you who have come to learn about the easy short-term fix to win the lottery I’m sorry to disappoint, there is none. There is a long term fix however that can really help: Mathematics.

Now I feel like I have to say this as most people don’t understand it. The chances of someone winning the lottery are very close to 0. In fact, a lottery with two withdrawals in which you have all the numbers would make you lose 80% of your investment. Or say for example someone plays the lottery twice a week for 10 years. For lottery tickets that go from 1€ this person would have spent over 1000€ in lottery tickets with maybe no return. Now imagine this person would have used the money ten years ago to buy Amazon shares or even Bitcoin!

Don’t worry, in this article I won’t make you do any math. The interesting thing about solving probability problems is that although the question posed might be very simple, the problem might be quite difficult (i.e. What is the probability that there are two same consecutive numbers in a winning lottery ticket?)

Let me show you a quick example.

False positives example

In a routine medical checkup, a person is detected a disease that only 0.1% of the population endures. The analysis used fails 5% of the time (so it says a person has the disease when they really don’t). What is the probability then that the person tested actually carries the disease?

You’d probably think 95%, but you’d be wrong, the number is actually much lower. For every 1000 people tested, 50 would be wrongly identified as having the disease (the 5%) and 1 would actually have it. So, of the 51 people that could have it only one has, the probability is then 1/51, which is slightly under 2%.

This problem is a perfect reflection of how with a bit of mathematics you can take better decisions. The three tricks I’ll talk about all have a mathematical explanation.

But I promised you a better chance to win the lottery using Mathematics, so here it is.

Here are the three main tricks one must do to increase their chances of winning the lottery

1. Use consecutive numbers

So then, what is the probability that there are two consecutive numbers in a winning lottery ticket? You’d probably say not very high, but it’s in fact 49,5%. That’s very high!
So how do I know this:
I relied on excel.

1. For a lottery where your six digit numbers from 1 to 49. Place al the numbers in order in column A.
2. In column B, place random numbers.
3. Make column B be in order and make column A follow. So if in Column A number 5 was tied to column B’s number 23, the pair should stay together.
4. Pick the first six numbers of your new column A. That will be our winning combination. Place them in Column C.
5. Now in column place the 15 differences in absolute value that you can find between the winning numbers.
6. Finally, in column E place the lowest difference, if it’s a 1 this means that at least there was two consecutive numbers. Try the process several time and see the results, for a sample of 100 tries I did, 43 had consecutive numbers.

2. Play winning combinations

Although this trick may seem very simple, the truth is if you look back at all the historical data of whatever lottery you play, many winning numbers come up again. Statistically the chances of you winning with a number that has already done so in a previous year is very high.

In the Spanish national lottery for example, in the 2245 lottery’s that have taken place since 1985, the winning combinations have repeated themselves so much that the chances of it happening again are 16,5%! That is so much higher than the regular chances of a random number.

3. The Delta Method

This is a method that was designed based on the frequency of certain numbers. Statistically speaking there are several numbers that have come up more than others, this method helps you pick your set of ‘random’ numbers for the lottery. This is how it works.

1. Choose a very low number. The number should be between 1 and 5. For instance, the number 1 is a good number to choose because often, more than 60% of the time, the number 1 is part of the winning delta numbers included in the series of any lottery. I chose 3

2. Pick two numbers between 1 and 8 There are a number of combinations that you could choose from. You could also choose two consecutive numbers like 5 and 6 or consecutive numbers like 7 and 7 to follow the first trick I thought you. I chose 1 and 5

3. Pick a number very close to 8 It can be above it like 9 or below like 7. I chose 7

4. Pick two numbers between 8 and 15 Choose two numbers a few numbers away from each other such as 12 and 15. Another option could be 11 and 7 or 10 and 13. I chose 9 and 12.

5. Add the numbers you have so far to make sure the sum is not higher than the highest number allowed! Mine are 3 – 1 – 5 – 7 – 9 – 12 = 37. So if in my lottery the highest number allowed where 56 I’d be good to go.

6. Rearrange the numbers randomly My new order is 5 – 3 – 9 – 12 – 1 – 7 This is not your final number

7. To create your final number: Your first number (using my numbers as an example) would be the first, so 5. The second would be the sum of the previous number plus the second one, so 8. The third would be the sum of the final second number plus the third number, so 8 plus 9. And so on. Here is a more visual example:

5 = 5
5 + 3 = 8
8 + 9 = 17
17 + 12 = 29
29 + 1 = 30
30 + 7 = 37

My final number is then 5 – 8 – 17 – 29 – 30 – 37

I hope these tricks are useful for you when you go buy your lottery tickets in the future.

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