In both the last Powerball and Mega Millions drawings, the sum of the first two white ball numbers equals the third number. As you can see, we have listed the drawing results for each below:
- 01/15/11 - PB 9 13 22 23 37
- 01/14/11 - MM 2 15 17 33 35
Since we enter the lottery results by hand after every drawing, we have noticed this pattern quite often. So, we decided to calculate the probability of these combinations being selected.
- In Powerball, there are 219,646 combinations where this occurs. This represents 4.387% of the population; and we would expect to see this once in every 22.79 drawings.
- In Mega Millions, there are 176,904 combinations where this occurs. This represents 4.631% of the population; and we would expect to see this once in every 21.59 drawings.
Checking the results of the past 26 drawings, we have found that this restriction has occurred twice in both lotteries (on 01/14/11 and 11/16/10 for Mega Millions), and (on 01/15/11 and 12/22/10 for Powerball). While this happens with double the frequency as we mathematically expect, we are not convinced that this is a viable strategy as yet. So for now, we attribute
the sum of the first 2 numbers equaling the third number as part of the normally expected random distributions.
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