Are the odds playing super lotto better than playing mega millions?

System for winning the Mega Millions or Powerball lotto?

• I try to apply a very basic and limited understanding of statistics to picking my numbers (although any combo can come up at any time, very unlikely the exact same combination will repeat consecutive draws, etc). I still realize maybe I'm lowering my odds from 1 in 100 million to 1 in 99,999,999 or whatever..... Just curious what anyone else does. Playing your birthday (or someone else's) doesn't count because it's automatically limiting yourself to half the numbers (31 and lower), plus it's not really increasing your odds. Just for entertainment, not expecting to find the magic pill that makes everyone on yahoo answers rich

• Answer:

  You may be misleading yourself by applying an incorrect understanding of probability. The reality is that there is NO statistical method for improving your odds of winning by even a fraction of a percent. There's no way of reducing your odds either. ANY number is entirely equal to any other in terms of probability, no matter what numbers came up in the past, in the last drawing, etc. Playing one's birthday is neither good nor bad, in terms of affecting your chances to win. There's no harm in limiting yourself to low numbers. There's no harm in using the numbers that won last week for your pick on this week's drawing. Again, for emphasis, it makes NO difference. You say it's very unlikely that the exact same combination will come up in consecutive draws. That's true, but it's exactly as unlikely as the chance that next wednesday's drawing will come up 4, 17, 19, 21, 35, 41. Both of those propositions are exactly the same as the chance that the next winning draw will be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. When looking at big probability problems, the large numbers involved can get in the way of our intuitive understanding of things. It's often best to test your theories by looking at a simpler problem. So test your probabilities by experimenting with rolling a single die. Try this: Roll a die 100 times. Everytime you roll a number that's exactly the same as the previous roll, make an "x" on a piece of paper. (for the first roll, pretend the "previous" roll was a 2). Meanwhile, every time you roll a 6, mark an "o" on a piece of paper. When the experiment is done, you should find roughly the same number of x's and o's. They should each happen roughly 1/6 of the time. There could be some slight departure from expected results, due to the small number of trials, but if you rolled the die 6000 times you'd find the results even closer to the 1/6 estimate, and you'd convince yourself that there's no harm, and no good, in picking a number because it's the same as last week's drawing.