Lottery Wheel Payout Calculator --- Coming Soon

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

With the completed development of our Hot Cold Lottery Number analysis pages and seeing their growing user visitation counts, six questions continually return to our minds. Specifically, we've wondered:

1. If I only play Hot Numbers, how many combinations must I play?
2. How much will these combinations cost?
3. How much will I win in total if I match 0, 1, 2, ... white balls?
4. If I repeat these combinations for a group of bonus balls (Megaball, Powerball, etc), how much will I spend?
5. And, how much will I win altogether?
6. Finally, if I adopt this type of strategy, should I buy the Powerplay, Megaplier, Sizzler option?

To answer these questions, we're creating a new wheeling payout calculator that will be custom tailored to each of our covered lotteries. This will be an interactive tool that will allow our users to change their assumptions and the implications immediately.

The benefit of this calculator is that any assumed set of wheeling numbers can be used, i.e. Even Odd, Divisible by 3, 4, 5 to 12, your own favorite set of numbers, prime numbers, etc.

Development has already begun and we're excited about the possibilities of its uses.  Hopefully, we will have it completed shortly and have it released within the next month.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Incredibly depressing Mega Millions Lottery simulator (boingboing.net)

Expect to See Paired Numbers Every 1 in 3 Lottery Drawings

If you're a fanatical dreamer about winning a big lottery jackpot, there's no doubt that you have considered playing paired numbers as a strategy for winning.

By pairs, we mean a drawing sequence that contains at least 2 numbers in a row: 1-2, 2-3, ... 55-56.

And if you study drawing results, you will notice that these type of numbers patterns occur very often. In fact, during the past 26 Powerball and Mega Millions drawings, we find this happened 10 times in each lottery. This equals or 38.5% of the time.

However, when we calculate the combinatorial  number of occurrences, we learn that there are:

• 1,364,200 paired combinations in Mega Millions (35.7% of the population), and
• 1,697,080 paired combinations in Powerball (33.9% of the population)

Based on these numbers, we learn that it is definitely normal for us to expect to see paired numbers approximately once in every three drawings.

JL...........

South Dakota and Delaware Spend the Most Per Capita on Lottery Tickets (Lottery Trivia Answer 2010-13)

Last Week's Trivia Question #2010-13 was: 

Using the answers of our past two weeks, we can divide a States lottery ticket sales by its population to determine:

• Which States sell the most lottery tickets per capita?
• Which States sell the fewest lottery tickets per capita?
• Do you think sales are based on population alone?
• Or, are sales based on the desire of people wanting to win a jackpot prize?

To answer the above, we referred to the Lottery Sales and State population links in the previous posts, and found that:

• The top 5 States (1-5) that spend the most on lottery tickets per capita are: South Dakota, Delaware, Massachusetts,  New York, and Georgia. The next five (6-10) are: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio.
• The States spending the least on lottery tickets per capita are: Idaho, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, and North Carolina.
• Based on the results of these rankings, we clearly conclude that sales are not based on State populations. For example, South Dakota spends approximately $0.853 per person on lottery tickets, but it ranks in the bottom 5 States in population. Whereas, California, who has the largest population, only spends $0.097 per person on tickets. 
• Observing the above results, we realize that a State's overall desire to win a jackpot prize plays an important role in the amount of lottery tickets that are bought in a State. Desire to win is important in the top 5 States and others. For example, Vermont spends $0.170 per person verses $0.155 in Texas.

JL.....

Related articles by Zemanta

• More People Buying Lottery Tickets Despite Recession (npr.org)
• Big Dreams, Slim Odds: The Lottery Economy (mint.com)
• Base Lotto prizes on ticket revenue (mysanantonio.com)
• N.J. Lottery sets all-time record in ticket sales (nj.com)

Are Lottery Sales Based on State Populations? (Lottery Trivia Question 2010-13)

This week's Lottery Trivia Question is about U.S. Lottery Sales in General.

Our Trivia Question #2010-13 is: 

Combining the trivia questions and answers of the past two weeks, we can now determine:

• Which States sell the most lottery tickets per capita?
• Which States sell the fewest lottery tickets per capita?
• Do you think sales are based on population alone?
• Or, are sales based on the desire of people wanting to win a jackpot prize?

Enter your answer by leaving a Comment to this post below. Leave your name, and if you have a website or blog, provide it's URL and name.

We will provide the correct answer next Monday, August 30th, and will post your name and a URL link back to your site.

JL.........

Related articles by Zemanta

• Base Lotto prizes on ticket revenue (mysanantonio.com)

California and Vermont Have Largest & Smallest Lottery Populations (Lottery Trivia Answer 2010-12)

Last Week's Trivia Question #2010-12 was: 

To help us understand whether states with the largest populations sell the most lottery tickets, we need to identify various State populations. So, last week, we asked:

• Which lottery selling States have the largest population? (most amount of people)
• Which States have the smallest population? (the least amount of people)

Based on the 2009 revision of the WorldAtlas.com , we found that:

• The top 5 States (1-5) ranked by biggest Population are: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois. The next five (6-10) were: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina.
• And, the States with the fewest number of people (ranking 43-50) were: Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. (Note that since neither Alaska nor Wyoming sponsor a state lottery, we have expanded this list to include the bottom five states that do have a lottery). 

JL.....

Related articles by Zemanta

• Which state has the smallest population? (greenanswers.com)

What States Have the Largest Population? (Lottery Trivia Question 2010-12)

Image via Wikipedia

This week's Lottery Trivia Question is about U.S. Lottery Sales in General.

Our Trivia Question #2010-12 is: 

Continuing with last weeks theme, we now wish to identify which Lottery States have the biggest and smallest population.  This will help to give us a better understanding of whether lottery sales are purely a function of demographics or desire to win. So, we ask:

• Which lottery selling States have the largest population? (most amount of people)
• Which States have the smallest population? (the least amount of people)

Enter your answer by leaving a Comment to this post below. Leave your name, and if you have a website or blog, provide it's URL and name.

We will provide the correct answer next Monday, August 23st, and will post your name and a URL link back to your site.

JL.........

Related articles by Zemanta

• What Was the Population of the U.S. Throughout Its History? (brainz.org)
• Base Lotto prizes on ticket revenue (mysanantonio.com)

New York Consistently Leads Yearly Lottery Sales (Lottery Trivia Answer 2010-11)

Last Week's Trivia Question #2010-11 was: 

Since lottery income has become an important source of hidden tax revenue, more and more States have been under pressure to increase sales and generate income. But, we wondered if the income received is simply a function of the population of the State. To help understand this, we first asked ourselves to identify:

• What are the top 5 lottery revenue generating States? (those making the most money)
• What are the bottom 5 lottery revenue generating States? (those making the least money)

Based on information from Data360's 2006 Lottery Sales by State, we find the answers.

• In order of yearly sales, the top 5 Lottery Sales are in: New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, and California.  Near these are: Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan.
• The bottom 5 States, i.e. those with the least Lottery sales are: Idaho, Nebraska, Vermont, Montana, and North Dakota (the lowest).

Data for these answers can be confirmed by visiting the NASPL Sales and Profits Page which summarizes sales for Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008 as well.

JL.....

Related articles by Zemanta

• Guest column: Lawmakers must stop raiding lottery scholarship fund (knoxnews.com)
• llinois Lottery Makes Last Call For Private Manager Bids (huffingtonpost.com)
• N.J. Lottery sets all-time record in ticket sales (nj.com)