title: Lottery ticket preferences as indicated by the variation in the number of winners.
abstract: Many gamblers believe that it is possible to find a strategy to beat the lottery including selecting numbers that are due to come up or looking for a bias in past numbers. In this paper, we examine sales figures and variations in the number of winners for the various prize levels of a popular Canadian lottery to detect lottery ticket preferences. It was determined that the lottery outcomes conformed well to a random outcome. No evidence of either a bias myth or due to come up myth was found. However ticket popularity indicated a marked preference for the number 7 and low numbers, and the avoidance of high numbers and adjacent numbers. In addition we found a linear and a quadratic relationship between past frequency of the numbers and ticket popularity indicating a belief in both the due to come up and the bias myths. The findings suggest strong non-random preferences in the selection of lottery numbers.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada. nigel_turner@camh.net
authors.forename: Nigel E
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Turner
mesh_terms: D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000523:psychology*; D002170:Canada; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D005715:Gambling / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D009042:Motivation; D011336:Probability; D012201:Reward