L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Lucky Numbers

September 20, 2009 on 9:14 pm | | In General Musing, In the news

Here’s an odd story out of Bulgaria.

SOFIA (Reuters) - The draw of the same six winning numbers twice in a row in Bulgaria’s national lottery was a freak coincidence, officials said Thursday.

Sports Minister Svilen Neikov ordered an investigation after the numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 were selected, in a different order, by a machine live on television on September 6 and 10. The results caused suspicions of manipulation.

An investigation found no wrongdoing in the draw or determining the winners, its chairman Konstantin Simeonov said.

That’s odd enough, but here’s the really odd part:

An unprecedented 18 people guessed all six numbers when they were drawn the second time and each got 10,164 levs ($7,700). Nobody won the top prize the first time.

Assuming Mr. Simeonov is telling the truth, one can only assume that there’s a small population in Bulgaria who routinely purchase a ticket for the previous day’s numbers.

I want to think that those 18 are professional mathematicians who know that those six numbers are as likely to come up as any other six. I know of one mathematician who routinely buys a lottery ticket with the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 just for the opportunity of giving probability lessons to skeptical gas station clerks.

But I doubt it.

An interesting thought is that there may be other sets of numbers that are popular, but the only way you’d find out is when those numbers are drawn. I’m sure no one suspected the popularity of the previous day’s winners.

But it would be interesting to know what those sets are, since avoiding them reduces the odds of having to share your winnings.

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