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Comment by Closi | Hacker News Reader

I’m not great at maths, but back of fag packet let’s say there are 100 suspicious sequences, and there is a 1 in 15 million chance of winning the lottery - that’s 100/15000000 or 1/150000.

Let’s assume that there are on average 2 lottery drawings per week per country, which means c400 lotteries.

So 400/150000 = 1/375 chance per week, so it’s going to happen every 10 or so years.

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Your math is correct. I would say two draws per week is wrong but I'm not a lottery expert. Every 10 years may seem surprisingly often, but we are including sequences like 2,3,5,7,11,13 which most people wouldn't find special. Even 10,12,14,16,18,20 (double of this "special" sequence) I think a lot of people wouldn't care as much.

Do you think two draws a week is a little on the high side or the low side?

The U.K. has 7 draws per week, and I assume the USA has draws in every state, so it could add up fast. I’m assuming most lotteries are weekly, but they could be much more infrequent.

I assume there are other funky possibilities like the crazy thought that someone could get their own phone number as a result, or the sequence 10,20,30,40,50,60 etc so I suspect there are a few other notable sequences hidden in there.

In Poland we have a lottery that draws 20 numbers out of 80 TWICE A DAY. Other lottery is drawing 3 times a week. So a lot of drawings.

EDIT: Oh, the best part: we have this "lottery for the impatient" that has draws every 4 minutes :)

It's called Keno, it predates most government-run lotteries, and many casinos run it every few minutes. The govt lotteries simply co-opted the game.

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