If the odds of one getting the winning Lotto 6/55 combination is one in 29 million, what are the chances of 433 bettors guessing the winning numbers?
The answer is mind-boggling.
OCTA Research Fellow and University of the Philippines Diliman Institute of Mathematics Professor Guido David explained the chances of winning such lottery.
“To get 433 lotto winners, the probability that I estimate is about one out of 1 followed by more than 1,000 zeros,” he said in an interview with CNN Philippines on Monday.
To illustrate the very small probability of having 433 winners, one out of one followed by 1,224 zeros, one million has six zeroes, one billion has nine, and a googol has 100 — the number of molecules in the known universe has 80 zeros, as the age of the known universe is about 4.32e17 (17 zeros).
David pointed out that it is not impossible for many people to win the lottery, especially as the winning combination last Saturday was a mathematical sequence.
“Some people are pointing to some factors [why many people won]. If we look at the winning combination, it’s a mathematical sequence — all multiples of 9 — so some people also find this highly suspicious. It looks like an algorithm of some kind,” he added.
However, he emphasized that getting such a string of numbers is just as likely as any other six-number combination from one to 55, which is one in 29 million.
“I don’t blame people who find it unusual or surprising — I, myself, am surprised about the result and it is also surprising that there are more winners than second place winners,” David said.
The 433 winners who got the winning numbers of 9-45-36-27-18-54 last Saturday will share the P236 million jackpot prize, with each getting around P500,000.
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