Can you predict the lottery?

Predicting the lottery is something we'd all like to be able to do, and a lot of people believe (or want to believe) that it is possible. If it were possible, (a) it would have been done, and (b) the lottery organizers would change the game so it wasn't!

"But the odds are for/against certain numbers."

Number history analysis is often paraded as the means to predicting the lottery, or providing 'hot' and 'cold' numbers. To understand the misguided logic and reasoning behind this nonsense, let me give a different example.

I have an unbiased coin (i.e. it's not physically prone to land one way or the other), and I'm about to flip it. I ask you what are the odds of it landing heads up. You may say 50:50, or 0.5, or even evens (no pun intended). They all amount to the same thing of course. Heads and tails are equally likely. However, what would you say if I told you that I had already flipped the coin 5 times, and each time it had come up heads? Well you may say (as lottery predictor software authors would) that this is significant, and that the odds of 6 heads on the trot is extremely unlikely, so the odds of another head is 1/64. This would make your original answer wrong, and you would be suggesting that the chances of a head with one flip of a coin to be tiny, which is absurd. So what's up?

Well 50:50 is the odds on a single coin flip. The 1/64 or 63:1 (not 64:1) is the odds for six flips. But in our case, 5 of the 6 flips have already occurred, so there's no doubt about their outcome. They are known 100%. All that can happen is one of two outcomes, 6 consecutive heads, or 5 heads and a tails. So we're back to our original 50:50, (just as it should be).

So the statistical odds are correct, but they have to be applied to future events only. Past events are already known, so the odds relating to them are certainty, and have no use.

This means one simple fact; past flips have no bearing on future flips. For lottery draws, this equates to previous draws having no bearing or significance on future draws. Prediction software and methods do not work.

The only way to win is to have lady luck on your side.