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I did some calculations on the South African Powerball numbers. The results may surprise you!

posted 4 years ago by Axon (110)
9 replies | jump to latest

The numbers 5,6,7,8,9,10 were in the news because some people found them suspicious. Other suspicious numbers possible in this game:

1 2 3 4 5 6
...
15 16 17 18 19 20

The game.
5 numbers from 1-50
1 number (PowerBall) from 1-20

Possible combinations 42375200.

Suspicious combinations 15.

Probability of one of the suspicious combinations in one game.
15/42375200=0.000000354

The game has been running for maybe 20 years with draws twice a week so 2080 times.

Probability of one of the suspicious combinations occurring at least once during 20 years.
1−(1−0.000000354)^2080=0.000736009

So 1 in 1358 chance of this occurring. Not that suspicious I would say.

Edit Revised calculation
https://moviechat.org/general/General-Discussion/5fcbf90402e4e20abe628e92/I-did-some-calculations-on-the-South-African-Powerball-numbers-The-results-may-surprise-you?reply=5fd66db2a3cf895911f936c4

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 4 years ago

> So 1 in 582 chance of this occurring. Not that suspicious I would say.

I'm not going to check your math, but at a glance your intermediate numbers look right to me. But your final result is incorrect. There's something you're not considering.

You're correct to consider not the odds of 5-6-7-8-9-10 occurring, but instead of *any* such suspicious appearing sequence happening. There's no reason to consider 11-12-13-14-15-16 any less bizarre that what occurred.

But you're restricting your calculations to the South African lottery. If this had happened instead with a lottery in Israel I'm sure some people would speculate that the Israel lottery had to have been compromised, that the numbers were too suspicious to be random, and so on. Same if the lottery had been in Canada, Japan, Ethiopia, or any of the countless other lotteries worldwide.

Unless you can show some reason why the South African lottery specifically was suspect a priori, then the event is *not* that it happened in South Africa. Instead, it's that it happened *somewhere on planet Earth*. And there are a hell of a lot of public games of chance out there. In the USA, states' Keno games have been played *millions* of times, not thousands. Which makes the odds of something like this happening somewhere sooner or later go way up.

[–] Axon (110) 4 years ago

I edited my post to reduce the number of combinations from 35 to 15 because the final numbers are shown sorted.

My post is about the South African lottery because it was in the news. You do the calculations for a Romanian lottery if you wish.

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 4 years ago

> My post is about the South African lottery because it was in the news.

Well then, why are you considering the other possible suspicious outcomes? 5-6-7-8-9-10 was in the news, not 2-3-4-5-6-7.

Why are you considering the 20 year run of lottery games? Tuesday's results were in the news, not some result from 2008.

You correctly state that doing these things would make the question *too* specific. But you fail to consider lotteries happen all over the world every day. What you are doing is like finding some spot where lightning struck yesterday and asking what the odds are that lightning would strike *that exact place*. No -- that just happens to be the place where it hit, that's all. And South Africa just happens to be the place where this occurred.

[–] Redsfan001 (6218) 4 years ago

Impressive math.

But your attention should be attuned to the South African government.

The transition from apartheid to inclusive government started well, but has since gone south. Governmental rot is becoming obvious for all to see.

President Zuma's long rule pretty much raped the country, he installed cronies in high posts, all dipped their hand in the honey jar. The government is now so mismanaged that they are having trouble keeping the power on.

Zuma is gone but some of his people are still in powerful positions to plunder.

I don't know who is in charge of the lottery system, but I wouldn't be surprised if he recently started buying mansions on the shore and a nice supersized yacht

[–] Axon (110) 4 years ago

Impressive math.

Thanks. I did that to find out the actual probability because one doofus in the other topic said: "Yeah but whats the chance its 5,6,7,8,9,10? Dam that must be in the Billions/trillions - no? am I wrong?". Yes he was wrong by a factor of millions/billions!

[–] Redsfan001 (6218) 4 years ago

I have changed my mind regarding this, the thieves weren't stupid, they just didn't care. The numbers selected would most certainly be chosen by more than one person. This would give cover for the thieves, it being harder to distinguish between the legit winners and the scammers.

The scammers didn't care because they greased the palms of the person or persons in charge of the investigation.

Within 2 days the government came to the conclusion that the numbers were valid.

Such a short time period for a investigation can be anything but thorough, it convinced me that not only was is it an inside job, but powerful people that head the investigation have been corrupted.

I don't think that there has been a major Powerball lottery in a "developed" country that has been corrupted by the government that is overseeing it.

This is a first to my knowledge.

It fits the pattern of the South African government, monies that are meant for the South African people to improve infrastructure, schools etc...are slowly being syphoned off by crooked government workers.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Axon (110) 4 years ago

I figured the game has been running for 20 years from Wikipedia. "The lottery is regulated by the National Lottery Commission, and was established in 2000."

The game was changed a bit in 2015 from 45 to 50 balls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_National_Lottery#PowerBall

the video said "Draw 1151"

So lets say 5 years with 50 balls and (1151−520)/(52×2)=6 years with 45 balls.

50!/(5!×(50−5)!)×20=42375200
45!/(5!×(45−5)!)×20=24435180

5×52×2=520
1151−520=631

1−(1−15/42375200)^520×(1−15/24435180)^631=0.000571258

That would be 1 in 1750 chance of goofy numbers in this lottery. 1 in 1750×5!=210000 if the machine spits them out in numerical order. 1 in 200000 would be suspicious.

[–] Axon (110) 4 years ago

the video is just a CG animation, so may be worthless

One news article said they use "industry standard random number generator" so the "balls" are just numbers in a computer. The CG animation is more fun than if they just showed the winning numbers for 10 seconds. Yes, it may not show the actual order the numbers are generated in.