lottery: Excel formulae required

[Guest]

I am a novice lottery player and was wondering if it would be ok to
request a excel formula.

Basically I have set up an spreadsheet of past lottery results and I
require excel formulae to enable me to determine and analyze frequency
of repeating doubles, trebles and quad combinations. Which I guess
would be 3 separate formulae. I suppose you wouldn't know the formulae
I could use.

(Please note my excel knowledge is basic but functional and I have
Excel 2002.)

Thanks in advance.

Samuel.

Please remove obvious spam trap if u wish to reply by email.

 

[Guest]

Samuel,

Not meaning to be a smar#%^ but the best predictor function you could use is

=Rand() or a similar function......

Paul, I do appreciate my endeavours with reference to the lottery
maybe a trifle frivolous.

I do understand the complexity of task I wish to perform. Presumably I
require a formula to display all possible double combinations for
example. And a array formula to loop through my lottery data and count
how many occurrences of each combination appear.

I have provided further details :

The lottery has 49 balls and 6 balls and the bonus ball are drawn. I
have a lottery table with all lottery results in ( Columns B:H ).

COLUMNS

A B C etc....

date& 1st No 2nd No etc....
draw no 500

Want I require is the most efficient formulae to achieve my aims of
identifying and determining the frequency of repetitive doubles,
triples and quad combinations.

Please note when I stated my excel knowledge is basic, I may have been
doing myself a disservice. My excel level is intermediate with some
understanding of advanced formulae & functions. But due to a lack of
familiarity I was trying to avoid a user-net response using advanced
terminology & excel formulae without a brief explanation of how to
execute it.

Thanks in advance.

Samuel.

Please remove obvious spam trap if u wish to reply by email.

 

[Harlan Grove]

...
I do understand the complexity of task I wish to perform. Presumably I
require a formula to display all possible double combinations for
example. And a array formula to loop through my lottery data and count
how many occurrences of each combination appear.

It's not complex. It's a standard for most introductory courses in probability.
Given a sample of N different numbers selected at random without replacement,
there are N * (N - 1) / 2 possible pairs, and each of those pairs should have
EXACTLY the same 2 / (N * (N - 1)) chance of occurring in any draw of 2 or more.

You could generate the pairs of numbers in {1..49} using the following formulas.

A1 [text constant]:
1 2

A2:
=IF(--RIGHT(A1,2)<49,TRIM(LEFT(A1,2))&" "&(RIGHT(A1,2)+1),
(LEFT(A1,2)+1)&" "&(LEFT(A1,2)+2))

Fill A2 down into A3:A1176. 1176 is rather a large population. If you were
tracking twice a week lottery draws, this represents a bit more than 11 years of
such draws. Balls used in the draws would be changed far more frequently than
this, and the *ONLY* potentially reliable explanation for why some balls *SEEM*
to be drawn more often is that they might be slightly heavier. If balls are
changed once a month, then analyzing historical lottery draws is as reliable as
numerology and astrology.

If you want to improve your chances of winning the lottery, it's simple: buy
more tickets. If you want to maximize your expected wealth, it's also simple:
don't buy any lottery tickets. If your interest is simply academic, using time
series to analyze sun spot series is more interesting.

 

[Myrna Larson]

OTOH, most lay people would consider an "introductory courses in probability" to be complex
<vbg>.

..
I do understand the complexity of task I wish to perform. Presumably I
require a formula to display all possible double combinations for
example. And a array formula to loop through my lottery data and count
how many occurrences of each combination appear.

It's not complex. It's a standard for most introductory courses in probability.
Given a sample of N different numbers selected at random without replacement,
there are N * (N - 1) / 2 possible pairs, and each of those pairs should have
EXACTLY the same 2 / (N * (N - 1)) chance of occurring in any draw of 2 or more.

You could generate the pairs of numbers in {1..49} using the following formulas.

A1 [text constant]:
1 2

A2:
=IF(--RIGHT(A1,2)<49,TRIM(LEFT(A1,2))&" "&(RIGHT(A1,2)+1),
(LEFT(A1,2)+1)&" "&(LEFT(A1,2)+2))

Fill A2 down into A3:A1176. 1176 is rather a large population. If you were
tracking twice a week lottery draws, this represents a bit more than 11 years of
such draws. Balls used in the draws would be changed far more frequently than
this, and the *ONLY* potentially reliable explanation for why some balls *SEEM*
to be drawn more often is that they might be slightly heavier. If balls are
changed once a month, then analyzing historical lottery draws is as reliable as
numerology and astrology.

If you want to improve your chances of winning the lottery, it's simple: buy
more tickets. If you want to maximize your expected wealth, it's also simple:
don't buy any lottery tickets. If your interest is simply academic, using time
series to analyze sun spot series is more interesting.

 

[Dave Peterson]

If you really want something in this life, you have to work for it - Now quiet,
they're about to announce the lottery numbers!

Homer Simpson
http://www.workinghumor.com/quotes/homer_simpson.shtml