Yesterday being the one year anniversary of 9/11 or 9-1-1 as it's being called just happens to be the Pick 3 Lotto numbers of New Yorks Lottery yesterday. Now, seriously, what are the odds of this? Smells fishy to me. Love to know how many winners there were. Check the facts for yourself here. (http://www.usatoday.com/leadpage/lottery/20020911.htm) Just scroll down to New York Evening Numbers of 9-11
DJ

I would say the odds are pretty steep! ...looks pretty fishy to me as well. I bet there are a lot of winners though!

Well, there are only a thousand possible permutations in the NY three-number draw, and two draws a day, so there was a one in five hundred chance that 9-1-1 would come up in one of Wednesday's two draws.

It just seems more weird than that because everyone's been so focused on the date.

Sorry to come over all prosaic :depressed ... Will there really be so many winners? I'd have thought it was verging on the tasteless to pick 9/11 as your lottery numbers... trivialisation and all that. But I guess you never know...

Leah

Tasteless it really is. If the machines had not stop accepting 9-1-1 bets, there could have been more than 15,000 winners. Let's just hope they would contribute some to the 911 funds.

If there happens to be 911 winners, I'll really be scratching my head. :)

Ed

Originally posted by Leah
Well, there are only a thousand possible permutations in the NY three-number draw, and two draws a day, so there was a one in five hundred chance that 9-1-1 would come up in one of Wednesday's two draws.


hmm..right you are! That does not sound as far fetched now...My math is pretty rusty, but wouldn't the second drawing also be a 1 in 1000 chance? ...or 1 in 999 if they can't repeat the first numbers drawn?

I think you're right Greg. But before the first one is drawn, you have 2 chances. :) So I think Leah is correct also. (But what do I know?) :) I never learned New York math.



Ed

Yes, but you're only focusing on the odds of drawing 9 1 1 as the numbers. Now add the odds of that number landing on the exact same day as the numbers pulled. That's getting into Probability and Statistics and that's where I think the odds are astronomical. Because you've suddenly added 365 days of the year to that calculation. Does that make sense?
DJ

Ed - The odds of getting any number is going to be 1 in 1000 regardless of what was drawn before...like flipping a coin- if you flip the first time and get heads you still have a 50/50 chance of getting heads the next time...I guess!!?? We need a statistic expert! :D What if you had 1000 draws in a single day? Would your odds then be 1 in 1? I guess it would be if you did not allow the same number twice... ::confused:

DJ - I'm going to wrap my brain around that one...not that 2 glasses of wine are going to help! :tongue:

Yup, I think I'll join you in that wine. This is getting complicated. :D On further study, I believe the odds still remain the same. However it was interesting. Oh we forgot to factor in the fact that it was New York also. :D
DJ

Don't worry...A good Merlot will make it all seem clear! :blank:

I should probably log off now before I really say something silly!

Greg,

It seems that what you're saying is regardless if you have one chance or two, the odds are the same. Are you using New York math? :D
After the first drawing, the odds are 1 in 1000 (or 999 or whatever). But that has only changed because the first chance is no longer there. At lease that's my thinking on the matter. Interesting subject. I'd like to hear from a math expert, since I'm not sure. For the record, I didn't do well in any subject in high school. :(

Ed

According to my husband and son, the odds are the same dispite the fact that out of a possible 365 days it happened on Sept. 11 which just happens to be a very significant day in our lives, and of all the cities in the country, it just happens to be New York where the crisis occured. Maybe I'm just looking at this from the wrong perspective. :) Merlot sounds good to me Greg.
DJ

Ed - Here is my totally unscientific thinking- :D Say you rolled a die twice. On the first roll you have a 1 in 6 chance of getting any particular number. so...you roll a 3. You remove the 3 from the possible numbers for your second roll and you now have a 1 in 5 chance of any possible number.

That I'll agree with. :) But I'm still looking through very fuzzy glasses when we're talking about the whole picture. :D

Ed

Just to add to the conversation. I play NY's pick 3 and know that those particular numbers have not been drawn since before 9/11/01! Even since we went to 2 drawings per day. I did not play those numbers that day, but I do know about 5 people who did. 4 don't know what to say and 1 couldn't care one way or the other. People often stun me.
Debbie

Forgot to add this. I, too, think it's fishy. And if it was a rigged situation, then it was in very bad taste.
Debbie

Better late than never. Just happened to look at this old thread and as I have a minor in math - mostly forgotten but some probability theory still sticks :) - I thought I'd post this:

The odds are in fact: 0.001999 or 0.1999% which is very close to 1 in 500 (0.2%) but not quite.

There were 2 drawings, each of them had a 0.001 (1 in 1000) chance of ending with these numbers as everybody agreed on. That means that for these numbers NOT to come out that day both drawings have to "fail" which they each had a 0.999 chance of doing. So the likelihood of both of them "failing" is 0.999*0.999=0.998001. Reversely the chance of at least of them succeeding in getting these numbers is then 1-0.998001 or 0.001999.

Things like this work almost linear in the low end (i.e. a small number of drawings where each has a small likelihood of "succeeding") which is why the 1 in 500 approximation is quite good (1 in a 1000 and then 1 in a 1000 is ALMOST 2 in a 1000, i.e. 1 in 500). However the "ALMOST" becomes important as you add more samples. As someone mentioned doing 1000 drawings would not make it certain that the numbers would come out of course. In fact the likelihood is smaller than you might expect at 1-0.999^1000 ~ 63%.

Sheesh, that was long ;)

/Claus

Thank you Claus. Now I can sleep again knowing that I was at least in the ballpark. :D

Ed

Ah yes, when in doubt seek out a mathmatician. :D Guaranteed to confuse you even more than you were before. :D Sorry Claus, I actually thought it was an excellent explaination and the fact that it flew right over my head proves that. :D

I guess it boils down to no matter how bad I want to stick those other elements into the equation it just don't change the facts. I concede to those who know more than I on this subject which just about includes the entire world population. :D
DJ

Thanks Claus! Your avatar fits well! :D Seriously...thanks for the explanation!

If you draw two three-digit numbers the odds of coming up with 911 at least once are (about) 1 in 500, as has been pointed out here. The odds of this happening on a particular date such as 9/11 are no greater or no less, as has also been pointed out. However, if you think not of that particular day, but of the date of ANY day being drawn, then you must remove from 365 all the dates which cannot occur in a three-digit combination.

(Note: I am not including leading zeroes in single digit months, since for consistency we'd then have to use leading digits in the day as well, and there could be no such three-digit dates.)

The two-digit months October, November, December (10, 11, 12) may only have single digit dates, so those three months include 3x9 or 27 possible dates.

April, June, September may end in a number no higher than 30, which adds 3x30 or 90 dates.

January, March, May, July, August may end in a number no higher than 31, which adds 5x31 or 155 dates.

February (assuming not a leap year) adds a possible 28 new dates, for a total of 27+90+155+28=300 dates which can be expressed with three digits.

Since we are looking for the odds of it happening AT LEAST ONCE, the easiest way to find this is to find the opposite odds--the odds that it WON'T happen at least once, which means it won't happen at all. The daily odds of the date NOT being drawn are 999/1000 for each drawing, and (999/1000)^2 for two daily drawings, which is 998001/1000000 (0.998001as decimal) chance that the date will not be drawn on any given day.

Now we take the odds that it won't happen on ONE day and raise that to the 300th power: .998001^300. Subtract this answer from 1.0 to get the odds that it WILL happen at least once those 300 drawings. This rounds to .548647, so the odds of it happening at least once become .451353. Pretty close to a 50-50 chance of NYC's drawing matching at least one date, in any given year (not counting the impossible dates).

However, this is just one local drawing. Keep in mind there are such drawings all over the country. We don't know exactly how many, but, just to get an idea of how fast the odds change when we take it outside of New York, suppose that each of the 50 states holds one such drawing. Now the odds of no current date being drawn anywhere in the country become .548647^50, which is .000000000000092, a verrrry small number. Subtracting this from 1.0 gives the odds of a current date being drawn at least once in a daily drawing of .999999999999908, just about a "sure thing." If the number had been drawn in San Diego or Chicago or Des Moines or Lexington or Miami folks would still be amazed, the number of amazed folks varying only according to how many heard about it.

Having ANY date drawn on its day is not so surprising. We just NOTICE it more when it's a significant date. How many dates are that significant that anyone would notice? Surely just a few a year, so it seems far less probable to have a day's date drawn than it actually is.

Our reaction to such things tends to be based more on emotions than statistics. The SIGNIFICANCE of a number drawn cannot be measured mathematically, so we can't factor "significance" into our statistical equations. Significance is an illusion created by our own emotions. So I guess I have to agree with DJ and her husband on this one.

Phyllis

How about this answer??!! I just heard on the radio yesterday, that some heads at Princeton, I believe, have an explanation for this occurance. They insist that it is an example of psychokinesis. They believe that so many people, thought of 911 so often that day, that the psychokinetic energy actually caused the number to come up! I swear I am not making this up. I guess this is why they get the big bucks.
Now I would like everyone on this site to channel all their psychokinetic or just psychotic energy to me.
Thank you :wink:
Debbie

:hairbow: psychokinetic icon...