SA lottery - nobbled?

[si_c]

That's interesting... for some reason it seems to have thrown the forum software out, unless si_c edited his post too?

I did, I was trying to reply to Accy whilst also typing out the message above - I forgot to cut out that reply so quickly edited it You shouldn't be jumping on the replies so fast at this time of night! Surely you should be tucked up in bed right now

 

[ColinJ]

In terms of lotteries the probability of a given set of numbers is a function of the number of balls and the selected number of balls.

So it's 1 in the total number of combinations, this is calculated as 59! / (6! * 53!) in the case of the UK lotto - or about 1 in 45million. For the SA powerball example you have an initial pick of 5 balls from 45, and one powerball from 20. To calculate this we would use the permutations instead - we want one very specific permutation of these balls, so we calculate the number of permutations ( 45! / 40! ) and multiply by the 20 possibilities of the powerball to get the estimate I mentioned above.

I'm multitasking... was it 45 balls in the SA lottery or 50?

In fact, I'm doing my usual trick of forgetting to get off the computer. I have a couple of TV shows to catch up on so I'll check back in tomorrow - byeee!

 

[Accy cyclist]

I did, I was trying to reply to Accy whilst also typing out the message above - I forgot to cut out that reply so quickly edited it You shouldn't be jumping on the replies so fast at this time of night! Surely you should be tucked up in bed right now

It's all so confusing. I deleted my post,thinking Colin was talking to me only to find he was talking to you,but by then he'd quoted my post.

 

[classic33]

I'm multitasking... was it 45 balls in the SA lottery or 50?

In fact, I'm doing my usual trick of forgetting to get off the computer. I have a couple of TV shows to catch up on so I'll check back in tomorrow - byeee!

Wiki says 52 balls/numbers.

 

[si_c]

Wiki says 52 balls/numbers.

The Powerball is 4 from 45 regular balls and 1 from 20 Powerballs according to Wikipedia, but it doesn't really matter, just substitute in whichever ones you want, the math is the same.

 

[ColinJ]

Wiki says 52 balls/numbers.

That's the standard lottery.

I just looked up their Powerball lottery - it used to be 1..45 for 5 numbers, plus 1..20 for the powerball. They extended the range for the 5 numbers to 1..50 in 2015.

 

[ColinJ]

It's all so confusing. I deleted my post,thinking Colin was talking to me only to find he was talking to you,but by then he'd quoted my post.

I have very bizarre conversations with myself at 04:00 and wonder who is talking! Probably a sign that I should go to bed earlier...