Many people think that the best way to play the lottery is to choose their own numbers and there are plenty of options for just how to do that and make sure that you are getting the best odds. After all, that’s what you’re really looking for right? You want to make sure that you have a great chance at winning the lottery, and that’s where we’re going to take a look at some of the mathematics that some lottery players like to use.
Are you ready for this because it’s definitely going to get complicated? If you’re a math person you’re going to love this. If you’re not you may want to take a look but it might not be the way that you want to start figuring out anything about choosing your numbers. After all, you want to be able to fully understand the options that you’re choosing and the way that you calculate your odds.
So, the first thing to look at is the probability of getting the right numbers, which will depend on the specific quantity of numbers that you select for the ultimate game. For the purpose of this article, we will assume that you are choosing six numbers and that the numbers available to select range from 1 to 49. This will give you a wide span of numbers to choose from, but not as wide as some of the games available.
When it comes to actually going through the math process with your lottery game you start with the quantity of numbers that could be drawn as the first number. In this case, you have 49 different options for the first number. You then have 48 different number options for the second number (since the numbers can’t overlap) and 47 for the third and so on. In order to determine what the odds are for selecting the exact right number, you would need to do the math of 49x48x47x46x45x44 = 10,068,347,520 (which comes to 1 in 10,068,347,520).
But this is not the exact right odds because you aren’t required to select your numbers in the same order as the numbers are drawn. You only need to have the right numbers. In order to account for this difference, you would take the number you got from the first equation and divide it by 720 (the number of different combinations for each of the numbers to be drawn).
This means you would take: 10,068,347,520/720 = 13,983,816 (which equals 1 in 13,983,816)
Of course, you don’t want to get too discouraged by those big numbers. Just because your chance of winning that jackpot is only slightly better than 1 in 14 million doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy a ticket. And for that, you’re going to need us to help you get tickets for the best lotteries with the largest jackpots. On our website, you’ll be able to see all of the different games available and see the odds for each one of them.