433 People Won the Philippines Lottery. Was it Luck - or Cheating? (nytimes.com) 46
"After 433 gamblers won a lottery drawing in the Philippines last weekend, people across the country debated a thorny question," reports the New York Times. "At what point does randomness begin to look a little too much like a racket?"
Some Filipinos accused the state-owned company behind the roughly $4 million prize drawing of fraud, a charge that was swiftly denied. Lawmakers said that they planned to investigate the winning draw as a way of securing the lottery's integrity. How was it possible, skeptics asked, that 433 people had all picked the same winning combination of six numbers — 09-45-36-27-18-54? Or that all six figures turned out to be multiples of nine?
Others said that the outcome was a simple case of good luck. (The winning numbers could be in any order.) Statisticians noted that it was not mathematically impossible for 433 winners to strike it big....
A few [critics] noted that some officials from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which sold nearly $443 million in tickets in the first half of this year, have been convicted of bribery and other charges over the past decade, including one case in which they pocketed prize money.... Lawmakers in both the House and Senate said this week that they planned to investigate the contentious draw. One of those legislators, Aquilino Pimentel III, the minority leader of the Senate, told The Times in a text message on Wednesday that while the result was "not impossible," it seemed "highly improbable...."
Professor Chua Tin Chiu, a statistician at the National University of Singapore, said the criticism was an example of humans misunderstanding the nature of randomness. "Some time ago, there was news about a person that struck the jackpot more than once in his lifetime," he said. "Would that be possible? Yes. Are the chances very low? Yes. Is it going to happen to someone? Yes."
Others said that the outcome was a simple case of good luck. (The winning numbers could be in any order.) Statisticians noted that it was not mathematically impossible for 433 winners to strike it big....
A few [critics] noted that some officials from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which sold nearly $443 million in tickets in the first half of this year, have been convicted of bribery and other charges over the past decade, including one case in which they pocketed prize money.... Lawmakers in both the House and Senate said this week that they planned to investigate the contentious draw. One of those legislators, Aquilino Pimentel III, the minority leader of the Senate, told The Times in a text message on Wednesday that while the result was "not impossible," it seemed "highly improbable...."
Professor Chua Tin Chiu, a statistician at the National University of Singapore, said the criticism was an example of humans misunderstanding the nature of randomness. "Some time ago, there was news about a person that struck the jackpot more than once in his lifetime," he said. "Would that be possible? Yes. Are the chances very low? Yes. Is it going to happen to someone? Yes."
Faulty randomness generator (Score:2)
For both tickets and lottery machine?
Re:Faulty randomness generator (Score:4, Informative)
For both tickets and lottery machine?
Not sure how the Philippines does it, but for Powerball and Mega Millions, the ping pong balls* are stirred [youtube.com] before a stream of air is used to select the five numbers and the powerball/mega millions ball. Note, keep your sound off due to the annoyance of the woman's voice in the video.
Also, here's a short video [youtube.com] showing some of the behind the scenes for the Powerball drawing.
In 1980, Pennsylvania's own lottery was rigged to allow a multitude of people to win [wikipedia.org].
As for your comment about a faulty random number generator, if I had saved them, I could show you a multitude of tickets I purchased over the years where the quick pic numbers match several of the numbers I've chosen. I'm so convinced the quick pics key off whatever numbers are on the ticket, that I now submit two cards: one with only quick pics, the other with my hand chosen numbers. On both lotteries, I have noticed if my numbers are run through first, the quick pics have a higher than likely chance of having some of the same numbers than if the quick pics are done first. Selection bias?
* They're not true ping poing balls. If you look, they are larger, but the name sticks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Faulty randomness generator (Score:4, Informative)
Since you seem to have some knowledge about this, do they typically ensure that the balls weigh the same, despite (presumably) having differing amounts of paint or ink due to the numbering?
Yes. They do weigh the balls (with gloves on) to verify one is not heavier or lighter than it should be. What those tolerances are I don't know, but obviousy it can't be much. Here's a link to one such story [cbsnews.com]. A slightly longer article [theconversation.com] about drawing the balls as well as a comment or two about the random number generator which is used for the quick pic numbers.
Regardless of what one thinks about the lotteries, the people involved take their jobs seriously to make the number selection as random as possible.
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Regardless of what one thinks about the lotteries, the people involved take their jobs seriously to make the number selection as random as possible.
.... WTF? We KNOW that lotteries have been rigged. Maybe not this one, but there have been some in the past. Clearly those people were NOT interested in the number selection being random. Are you trying to imply that every single employee of every lottery is dead-on honest? That nobody is trying to game the system?
Pffff... Please...
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I actually saw something on this some time ago - as far as paint goes *the entire ball is painted in every case*. The numbers in one color, the rest of the ball in another - so that each and every ball has exactly the same "weight" of paint on it.
Re: Faulty randomness generator (Score:5, Insightful)
My bet, on the entry forms, thereâ(TM)s 9 columns when you select your numbers, and lots of people choose all the end row. For that matter, other numbers of rows would make this form patterns.
People like to say that thereâ(TM)s no better lottery numbers to choose than any others, but there are. The best lottery numbers to choose (if you must play the lottery) are the ones that other people are unlikely to choose. That means never choose numbers that form a pattern, never choose ones that look like a date, and never choose ones from TV shows.
It doesnâ(TM)t surprise me at all that a lot of people won at the same time when the winning numbers happened to form a pattern. Of course, that doesnâ(TM)t rule out fraud, but Iâ(TM)m not super suspicious.
Re: (Score:3)
The UK National Lottery reports that several thousand people play 1-2-3-4-5-6 each week. It's no more or less unlikely than any other combination, but if it does come up the winners are likely to be disappointed in the amount they win.
Re: Faulty randomness generator (Score:5, Informative)
My bet, on the entry forms, there's 9 columns when you select your numbers, and lots of people choose all the end row.
YES! That's why it isn't actually an anomaly, it's a pattern on the card.
People who don't look at lottery cards obviously don't know it, but this is one of many common formats. Here's a card like this guy is holding [eastcoastdaily.in], Here's another image of a similar card. [pcsoonline...esults.com]
LOTS of people just pick the end row, meaning 9-18-27-36-45-54. It happened that those were the winning numbers, except drawn in a different order. No more or less random than getting 10-20-30-40-50-60, or getting 1-2-3-4-5-6, or getting 5-10-15-20-25-30. It's a pattern certainly, but patterns happen all the time in random numbers.
Re: (Score:2)
are the ones that other people are unlikely to choose
If any of the 433 people that won this lottery followed your advice, they would not have won.
Re: (Score:2)
For this one particular lottery, sure.
And these 433 people get to split the 4 million prize 433 ways, meaning roughly 10,000 to each. Still a nice win, but not what we usually think of as 'winning the lottery'.
Re: Faulty randomness generator (Score:2)
People have no idea on how asians/oceania choose lottery numbers.
Anyway it happens in the west to some extent too, many people choose 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 in finland etc.
In thailand people pay monks to read numbers by scratching a tree or tea leaves etc(in thailand tho you have to buy tickets with numbers on them already)
Been done before (Score:5, Informative)
110 people claimed second place winnings in the 30 March 2005 Poweball after using numbers they obtained from fortune cookies [snopes.com]
No surprise there (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time winning lottery numbers confirm to a pattern there are a lot of winners because many people base their bets on patterns.
Re: (Score:2)
Every time winning lottery numbers confirm to a pattern there are a lot of winners because many people base their bets on patterns.
That makes me wonder how many people chose other multiples in past lotteries such as 2-4-6-8-10-12, or 5-10-15-20-25-30.
If it's a common practice then this result isn't interesting.
But if no one picked such numbers in this lottery or the past, and today there's 433, then yeah, It's suspicious.
multiples of 9 (Score:5, Informative)
This is why you don't guess multiples of 9 (9-18-27-36-45-54), or dates, or ANY pattern another person might also guess... same odds of winning, increased odds of dividing a winning pot.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
This is why you don't guess multiples of 9 (9-18-27-36-45-54), or dates, or ANY pattern another person might also guess... same odds of winning, increased odds of dividing a winning pot.
Guess whatever numbers you want, you're not going to win.
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Guess whatever numbers you want, you're not going to win.
433 disagree with you.
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This is why you don't guess multiples of 9 (9-18-27-36-45-54), or dates, or ANY pattern another person might also guess... same odds of winning, increased odds of dividing a winning pot.
This only matters if you split the prize. Even the mega jackpots, only the top prize is usually split. The smaller prizes are automatic regardless of the number of winners.
Re: multiples of 9 (Score:2)
Re: multiples of 9 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:multiples of 9 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Birthday numbers (Score:2)
This isn't the case here, but in other lotteries when all of the numbers end up in the 1-31 range, it's not uncommon for there to be multiple winners. Many people like to pick their numbers as the birthday dates of themselves or people close to them, so there's a disproportionate number of selections in 1-31 vs. larger numbers. When the jackpot numbers are all in that range, having multiple winners isn't surprising.
While I wouldn't discount cheating here, it does seem plausible that many people would have
Randomness (Score:3, Insightful)
"How was it possible, skeptics asked, that 433 people had all picked the same winning combination of six numbers — 09-45-36-27-18-54? Or that all six figures turned out to be multiples of nine?"
Are the numbers printed in rows of 3 or 9? If so, people may be choosing numbers with some kind of pleasing visual pattern and the random number generator managed to stumble into one of those patterns.
That seems more likely than a conspiracy so vast that 433 people got the winning numbers and were happy to split it 433 ways.
There's other scenarios (a newspaper's "lucky numbers") but the dumb luck scenarios seem more probable than conspiracy scenarios.
Re: (Score:2)
That seems more likely than a conspiracy so vast that 433 people got the winning numbers and were happy to split it 433 ways.
Of course it's suspicious: 4 * 3 * 3 = 36, which is a multiple by 9 and one of the winning lottery numbers!
Probably luck. (Score:2)
See Terence Tao's analysis. [wordpress.com]
Not surprising (Score:3)
I had mixed luck finding a picture of a PSCO 6/58 card but if you think about it...
Assuming rows/columns of 10 numbers each, multiples of 9 will be a diagonal line of numbers.
Seriously though, human nature leads to a handful of common number picks based on simple patterns. This pattern works visually and the fact it's multiples of 9 is mere coincidence. Pretty sure 8-17-26-35-44-53 would also have lots of winners (diagonal from 8 which is 8+9+9+9 etc.) as would any horizontal/vertical line.
If the drawing numbers hadn't followed a simple pattern and 433 people won...then go chase cheaters.
Aw, come on! (Score:2, Interesting)
A tiny bit of research would have helped.
https://www.thehindu.com/life-... [thehindu.com]
Numbers were connected by diagonal line. (Score:1)
UK Lottery Example (Score:3)
In the UK National Lottery, back in 1995, 133 people shared the jackpot.
(ref: wikipedia, though I remember this from when it happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. )
Doesn't sound too odd (Score:1)
Multiples of 9 will likely form some line on a lottery ticket. Now, since the only link in the story is to a paysite I have a hard time figuring out what a lottery ticket would look like in the Philippines, but if it's 9 columns wide, it would be a straight line down, if it's 10 wide it would be a diagonal line...
Our lottery also had a drawing that had a few dozen winners (instead of the usual 0-2). Reason? The numbers formed a neat little cross on the ticket.
Just Ask the Winners? (Score:1)
My first thought is that the random numbers might just of happened to be something very meaningful to humans or philipeans.
I remember my university stat professor explaining how to win at the lottery. Statistically speaking, if you wait for a mega jackpot that went unclaimed for a couple rounds, all you have to do is pick uncommon numbers that no one else will pick and you have a positive expected return.
Play with the numbers .. and have fun. (Score:3)
The lottery vote: "09-45-36-27-18-54"
hint in text -> (The winning numbers could be in any order.)
-> turned out to be multiples of nine?
1.) Divide all numbers by nine and get
01-05-04-03-02-06
2.) Arrange those in ascending order
01-02-03-04-05-06
Wow not only multiples by nine but numbers 1 to 6 just being multiplied by nine to get the winning number.
Is it cheating? No it's just people being unimaginative and just choosing a multiplicator or using their birthdates.
I guess the same problem will occur with:
1: 01-02-03-04-05-06
2: 02-04-06-08-10-12
3: 03-06-09-12-15-18
4: 04-08-12-16-20-24
5: 05-10-15-20-25-30
6: 06-12-18-24-30-36
7: 07-14-21-28-35-42
8: 08-16-24-32-40-48
Guys sorry that I busted and tainted all your lucky numbers!
9: 09-18-27-36-45-54
"09-45-36-27-18-54"
Fortune cookies (Score:1)
In 2005 a mass produced cookie fortune caused a fraud investigation [tek-bull.com] when there were 110 winners.
Nothing suspicious about the number of winners (Score:2)
Who knows? (Score:2)
The information in the article is obviously insufficient to determine if there was cheating.
However I wonder if when the number of winners was statistically "too low" in this lottery if that "anomaly" makes the news.
This may be a little like fatal crashes of commercial airliners in the US. Such crashes are very rare yet each one gets extensive news coverage. However I have yet to find a "newspaper" that publishes, every day, headlines like "In remarkable streak of safety, yet another day passes with $n comm
It was done the usual way (Score:2)
Their tickets were filled out after the numbers were known and backdated into the computer.
Oldest trick in the game, they even did it before the computer was invented.
Happens (Score:2)
Bullshit article (Score:2)
The numbers are 9, 2x9, 3x9, 4x9, 5x9, 6x9. Of course, something like that will always have a lot of winners. And, of course, something like that, while rare, can happen. There is no story here.
Cases in Germany (Score:2)
The second case was the Dutch winning numbers winning in Germany a week later. Again a huge number of winners.
If people choose their own numbers, some will be chosen massively more often than others.
Fortune Cookies (Score:2)
There's a pretty good book [amazon.com] that starts off a large group of people winning a lottery because they played their fortune cookie numbers.