Heads and Tails, Odds and Evens - The law of Averages

[Peter]

Hiya,

I've just become the manager of a syndicate at work having never placed more that a tenner on the lottery since it started and I thought I'd download all the numbers into a spreadsheet and have a play with some ideas I had to see if I could increase my chances of actually winning something meaningful.

The say if you flick a coin a 1000 times (unbiased coin that is), you can expect the actual outcome to be not far off 50%-50%.

I thought I'd do the same for Odds and Evens in the lottery and I was quite surprised to find that after 1599 draws and 9594 balls (no bonus), that the odd balls had over-achieved by only 14 balls, which, is pretty damn close to 50-50 (or 51.02-48.98 in this case as 1 extra odd) as you're gonna get.

Does anyone else employ this simplistic method to anything more complex and do you think The Law of Averages has any real meaning when it comes to prediction?

Best,
Pete

[Len]

(04-23-2011 08:37 PM)Peter Wrote:  Hiya,

I've just become the manager of a syndicate at work having never placed more that a tenner on the lottery since it started and I thought I'd download all the numbers into a spreadsheet and have a play with some ideas I had to see if I could increase my chances of actually winning something meaningful.

The say if you flick a coin a 1000 times (unbiased coin that is), you can expect the actual outcome to be not far off 50%-50%.

I thought I'd do the same for Odds and Evens in the lottery and I was quite surprised to find that after 1599 draws and 9594 balls (no bonus), that the odd balls had over-achieved by only 14 balls, which, is pretty damn close to 50-50 (or 51.02-48.98 in this case as 1 extra odd) as you're gonna get.

Does anyone else employ this simplistic method to anything more complex and do you think The Law of Averages has any real meaning when it comes to prediction?

Best,
Pete

Hi Peter
Have a look at the last 199 draws
on the attached Odd.txt
It's a list of just odd numbers,
they are divided into sections of ten draws.
I hope you find it helpful

[Peter]

(04-27-2011 04:20 AM)Len Wrote:  Hi Peter
Have a look at the last 199 draws
on the attached Odd.txt
It's a list of just odd numbers,
they are divided into sections of ten draws.
I hope you find it helpful

Cheers Len,

It all seems quite random but I suppose it's how we choose to group it for prediction purposes that matters. We could look at each ball column and find out how many odd have occurred in the 119 draws and then work out what is the probable polarity for want of a better word. Or we could add up the number of odds in each row and do the same.

In my attachment for the same number, 119 draws, I'd probably take a guess that we'll have to be seeing more of 3 odd balls in the near draws to come, in order to keep the experimental probability in-check with the theoretical. Is that just an other way of saying, "the law of averages states that..."

I don't know. I wish I paid more attention at school in stats lessons!

[Len]

Hi Peter
Sorry that should have been the last 199 draws.
I've posted the odd.txt again and some stats
i.e. Lotto.txt