Is it possible to improve your chances of winning big in the National Lottery

 It is possible to increase your chances at winning big in National Lottery

This was the question I asked when I made the decision to start playing the nation's favourite flutter every day. While I couldn't increase my chances of having my numbers selected, could I improve my chances of not being shared with my winnings if I had my numbers selected? While the numbers that are generated by the machine are random, the numbers that people select are not random (unless they use the Lucky Dip option). What if I could not play the machine? Could I still play the opponent?

Numerous academic papers have been published on the topic. Some businesses even have been established to sell information to players in order to protect any winnings. People should look at examples such as January 14th 1995, when 133 winners shared a PS16 million jackpot but each won approximately PS122,500.

The official statistics on the National Lottery's numbers chosen were published in the early days but have been removed from the public domain. You can still extract information about player preferences by looking at two types of Lottery draws. These are those that had a winner or those that did not.

Between its launch on November 19th 1994, and October 31st 2012. 1,759 Lottery draws resulted in a winner of the jackpot. 361 were not winners. These subsets were analyzed separately. I looked at how the numbers were drawn and how it compared to the expected probability. I made sure to remove any sampling bias caused by random draws. This would eliminate, for instance, the possibility of a number that was drawn significantly more than anticipated across all draws appearing in one subset more than expected due to random selection bias.

If conscious selection really is at work, then it would be expected that an unpopular number will appear less within the jackpot subset than was expected, and more within roll-over. This approach doesn't take into consideration that numbers are selected from a group of six. This means that a number which is chosen by chance could be considered to be a popular number or not. The effect should decrease as the sample size grows. As you'll see, however, the results produced by this approach can be explained and are not necessarily spurious.

The outputs from both subsets can be combined into one metric to show that conscious selection is evident. Below is an illustration of the 49 possible numbers. The popularity scale shows that the higher the columns are, the more popular the number. The frequency of occurrence predicted by probability is indicated by the red dot line.

It is worth pointing out certain patterns:

The much-talked about "birthday bias" is evident. This refers to the fact that players use the birth dates and loved ones to determine number selection. As you can see, smaller numbers are more popular that larger numbers.

However, 31 is more popular than 29/30 and 31/30. This is despite the fact it's less likely for someone to be born on 31/31 of a month as compared to 29/30. This could be due to the order of the numbers on a playslip.

13 is one the most disliked numbers in the birthday bias' region. This is despite the fact that it has a cultural dislike. Its neighbor 14, which is often skipped when the casual selector scans the board from right to left, is also unpopular.

7. The most popular number is 7, followed by 3. This finding aligns with common knowledge about the public's attraction for these numbers. Take, for example, "choose number between 1-10".

There is also a strong trend to lower numbers ending in 7s, such as 7, 17 or 27.

Future plans call for further analysis that will show how geometry affects popularity. I will also be studying the popularity of combinations.

It is recommended that you choose numbers which are not popular (those with smaller columns) in order to play the opponent. This will minimize the possibility of another player choosing the same numbers. This analysis has decreased the effectiveness for the combination 32, 34 and 39, 40s, 46s, and 48. This combination is not recommended to be used for any other purposes than sharing the possibility of winning with the Understanding Uncertainty readers. TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING USING LOTTO MACHINES