Another outcry after an “impossible” lottery result that “must” be fraudulous! Obtaining the sequence 5,6,7,8,9,10 on the Tuesday December 1, 2020, draw of the Souht-African Powerball is indeed a low probability event. Just like obtaining any fixed sequence on a specific day for a specific lottery system. As I am unsure the last number has to differ from the others or not, consider the approximation where the 6 numbers are drawn uniformly without replacement from the first fifty integers. The number of outcomes is then approximately 16 millions, making any fixed outcome having a chance of 6 10⁻⁸ of happening for one draw. However, the psychological impact of an “impossible” lottery result would have been the same for any sequence of 6 consecutive numbers, which makes the event happening with a probability of approximately one chance in 400,000. Not so staggering then! And considering the repetition of lotteries, space- and time-wise, it takes roughly 40,000 draws for a consecutive sequence to be drawn with probability 10%. Which means 16 years if considering each US State having a draw every week…
Archive for coincidences
(im)possible lottery outcome
Posted in Kids, Statistics with tags coincidences, lottery, Powerball, South Africa on December 27, 2020 by xi'anfor a coincidence
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel, University life with tags Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, coincidences, JSM 2018, North Face, tee-shirt, The Norse Farce, Vancouver on August 5, 2018 by xi'anLast night in Vancouver, we were walking back to Chinatown under an expressway, in a rather uninspiring section of town. Waiting at a cross-light with another couple on the other side. As we crossed the street I glanced at the man and noticed his Chamonix North Face tee-shirt. He happened to do the same and… noticed my identical Chamonix North Face tee-shirt! We shared a laugh at this (huge?) coincidence and continued on our respective ways. (He was not taking part in MCMskiii in case this seems a likely explanation!)
“those” coincidences
Posted in pictures, Travel, University life with tags Bayes 250, Châtelet, coincidences, Edinburgh, Gare du Nord, ICMS, India, Indian food, Marc Suchard, Paris, RER, RER B, Scotland, The Balmoral, visa on June 21, 2014 by xi'anLast Thursday night, after a friendly dinner closing the ICMS workshop, I was rushing back to Pollock Halls to catch some sleep before a very early flight. When crossing North Bridge, on top of Waverley station, I then spotted in the crowd a well-known face of a fellow statistician from Cambridge University, on an academic visit to the University of Edinburgh that was completely unrelated with the workshop. Then, today, on my way back from submitting a visa request at the Indian embassy in Paris, I took the RER train for one stop between Gare du Nord and Chatelet. When I stood up from my seat and looked behind me, a senior (and most famous) mathematician was sitting right there, in deep conversation with a colleague about algorithms… Just two of “those” coincidences. (Edinburgh may be propitious to coincidences: at the last ICMS workshop I attended, I ended up in the same Indian restaurant as Marc Suchard, who also was on an academic visit to the University of Edinburgh that was completely unrelated with the workshop!)