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jpak

(41,742 posts)
Sun Jun 23, 2019, 03:23 PM Jun 2019

More than 2,000 people win North Carolina lottery by picking '0-0-0-0'

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-2-000-people-win-north-carolina-lottery-picking-0-n1020786

RALEIGH, N.C. — Turns out that zero can be a lucky number.

North Carolina's state lottery Saturday said it set a record payout after the winning numbers in a Pick 4 game came back "0-0-0-0."

The lottery said about 1,000 tickets at $1 were sold and will pay out at $5,000. Another 1,000 tickets were sold for 50 cents, and they will pay out at $2,500. Lottery officials said winners should expect "extended waiting times" when picking up their prizes.

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More than 2,000 people win North Carolina lottery by picking '0-0-0-0' (Original Post) jpak Jun 2019 OP
I did not realize that lottery numbers could appear more than once. PoindexterOglethorpe Jun 2019 #1
depends on the lottery lapfog_1 Jun 2019 #2
Clearly I should buy lottery tickets more often! PoindexterOglethorpe Jun 2019 #3
most lotteries are sucker bets lapfog_1 Jun 2019 #4
Oh, yes. PoindexterOglethorpe Jun 2019 #5
I do math for a living lapfog_1 Jun 2019 #6
May I ask, PoindexterOglethorpe Jun 2019 #8
Daily 3 and 4 Digit Lotteries Don't Work Like Keno Indykatie Jun 2019 #7
There are two kinds of draw lotteries jmowreader Jun 2019 #9

PoindexterOglethorpe

(25,750 posts)
1. I did not realize that lottery numbers could appear more than once.
Sun Jun 23, 2019, 03:47 PM
Jun 2019

This definitely comes under the heading of "You learn something new every day."

lapfog_1

(29,166 posts)
2. depends on the lottery
Sun Jun 23, 2019, 04:29 PM
Jun 2019

most are run like Keno... once a number is picked it is removed from the pool of available numbers for the next pick (hence the player must not select the same number twice either).

This has to do with the Keno board at casinos that offer it... it lights up the next number picked for the game that is running... once lit, it stays lit until the game is over.

However, since state lotteries are not done with any such board... they can do what they want regarding allowing the same number to be selected twice in the same game or drawing.

lapfog_1

(29,166 posts)
4. most lotteries are sucker bets
Sun Jun 23, 2019, 05:21 PM
Jun 2019

not only are your odds of winning low... but the payout is rarely a "true payout" meaning that for each dollar bet, should you beat the odds, you will not receive a dollar back (in compared to the odds of winning). For example, lets do a lotto of 2 picks... where each pick can be 0 or 1. There are 4 such possible picks... you have to be assured that when you bet a dollar on this lotto, you will win at least 4 dollars back (even odds)... but rarely do real lottories ever offer that... especially considering that the winnings are discounted for "lump sum" payouts plus the taxes you will owe on your winnings.

so... if the odds are 18 million to 1 against, you need to wait until the jackpot reaches at least 60 Million dollars before you wager 1 dollar to win...depending on how your state recognizes income from gambling.

add to that the uncertainty of winning the entire jackpot by yourself. Generally speaking, as the jackpot grows, the probability grows of having to split (due to publication of the "enormous" jackpot, many occasional players will enter).

Your better off playing blackjack or craps (especially craps if you can back your come/don't come bet with odds) at a regulated casino. your still going to lose your money... but much more slowly and if you are "up" at some point and simply walk away never to gamble again...

PoindexterOglethorpe

(25,750 posts)
5. Oh, yes.
Sun Jun 23, 2019, 05:32 PM
Jun 2019

And while I do not know the precise math involved, that's why I don't buy lottery tickets.

It's always amusing when someone suggests to a math teacher they should buy lottery tickets. Math teachers absolutely know better.

PoindexterOglethorpe

(25,750 posts)
8. May I ask,
Sun Jun 23, 2019, 11:32 PM
Jun 2019

in what way do you do math for a living?

I love math. When I was in high school I was in a math program called UICSM - the University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics. A new math, so to speak. It was incredible. We proved everything. I took it for three years, at which point we were well into calculus and I was, quite frankly, over my head. More on that below.

I then didn't take any more math for some 30 years, and when I needed to take math again, tested directly into algebra 2. I had remembered a lot more than I thought I had. I'd also sit in math class and things would bubble up out of the very dark swamp of my brain. The teacher would be saying, This is true if this other is true and I'd know it was true if and only if the other thing was true. There were some other topics we'd covered in UICSM that simply weren't showing up in college algebra, and when I asked the math teachers at my junior college where I was now taking classes, they'd say, "Oh, Poindexter! That's finite math. You usually don't get it until several more years of college classes."

I found myself enjoying the math classes so much that I took a statistics class I wasn't required to take, and then was having so much fun I took calculus. I'm probably the only person in the history of math that took calculus for fun at the age of 47.

And here's the real interesting thing. When I was taking calculus I was enjoying it so much that I'd stop the math teachers I knew and say, "Why am I enjoying it so much now?" And to a person they'd say, "Oh, Poindexter. What people don't understand is that math is developmental," and they'd go on to say that a lot of 16 or 17 or even 18 year olds are simply not ready for calculus yet. They were distressed that the very good local public schools tended to push kids into taking advanced math as early as possible when many of them weren't quite ready for it.

The lightbulb went off in my head. I'm reasonably smart, but at 16 I wasn't really ready for calculus. In my 40s, I was. You don't really have to wait that long, but every chance I get I tell my story to high school students and tell them that it's okay if they're not ready for calculus that soon. Give it a year or two, which was exactly what the college math teachers all told me, and you'll be ready.

As a consequence, my younger son didn't take calculus in high school, even though he was on track for it. He struggled a little bit with college algebra, but did just fine with AP statistics. I think he may have taken calculus in college, not entirely sure.

My older son did just fine taking calculus in high school, loved differential equations, is currently in a PhD program in astronomy. Several years ago he did tutoring/math help desk at a local community college. I frequently discuss math things with him.

I love math.

Indykatie

(3,691 posts)
7. Daily 3 and 4 Digit Lotteries Don't Work Like Keno
Sun Jun 23, 2019, 06:41 PM
Jun 2019

There are 3 or 4 different drums used in these daily lottery drawings. The same number can be repeated in any of the 3 or 4 positions. 666 was pulled for a 3 digit lottery number once and there were thousands of winners for that combination too.

jmowreader

(50,453 posts)
9. There are two kinds of draw lotteries
Mon Jun 24, 2019, 10:24 AM
Jun 2019

Full disclosure: I transcribe the lottery winning numbers from the Idaho State Lottery website into my newspaper, so I read the lottery results every day I work.

The really big lotteries like Powerball and Mega Millions have either one of two machines. In a one-machine game, there are balls from 1 to...oh, 69 (the current number of balls in the Powerball white ball machine) and all the balls come out of it. In a two-ball machine, the second machine has, say, 26 different-colored balls (once again, the current configuration of the Powerball red ball, or Powerball, machine) and one ball comes out of it. The Powerball can match one of the five white balls, but all five white balls will be unique. Idaho runs several medium-size games that also work like this.

Small lotteries like Idaho's Pick 3, Washington's Daily Game or North Carolina's Pick 4 have one machine for each ball drawn, and each machine has ten balls in it - zero to nine. Since there are as many copies of each figure as there are numbers in the game, it's completely possible (and really somewhat common) that all the balls could have the same figure on them. I checked the Idaho Pick 3 numbers; in the last 20 draws there were seven with a repeated number. It's unusual, but not unheard of, for all the balls to have the same number on them.

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