My brain is barely functioning today. If I turn my head too quickly, I can feel fried synapses rattling around in my skull like burnt light-bulb filaments. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have a job. I woke up on the couch this morning after a few hours of sleep, then retired to my bedroom for about ninety more minutes of rest. When I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror I felt like the saddest, dirtiest whore in the whole wide world. Makeup stained checks, cocktail dress hanging pathetically around my waist…the very definition of the word “mess.”
When I was in Mr. Milan’s fifth grade class, all of my friends were either in Mrs. Bier’s or Mrs. Heller’s classes. Because of this, I started hanging out with bad seeds and getting in trouble. I stopped paying attention in class. I would zone out frequently. One day, during a particularly boring lecture on something that was of little importance, my thoughts turned to the lottery. I’d recently visited my sickly grandmother’s apartment in Hackensack, and the floor of her bedroom was littered with old, faded lottery tickets. She used to play the Pick-3 religiously. At that moment in Mr. Milan’s class, the numbers 1, 0 and 4 randomly popped into my head. I thought that if I were old enough to play the lottery, I would definitely use those numbers. The next weekend I went for breakfast at Seymour’s with my mother, and while she paid I studied the chart on the wall behind the register with the week’s winning lottery numbers. Sure enough, 1, 0, and 4 had come up in the previous few days. Even though I am of age, I’ve only once played the lottery, and never tried the Pick-3. I still wonder what would happen if I played those numbers.
Which leads me to my main point: somebody just published a pattern analysis of MegaMillions Lottery Numbers. I was arguing with someone the other day about lottery odds, and how nonsensical it is to play a number between one and nine because mathematically the odds are greater that a double-digit number will be drawn over a single-digit number. To spare you from having to read the whole document, I’ll sum it up here for you.
Ball #1 – 7, 5, 1, 2, 3 represent 39.1% of the winning numbers.
Ball #2 – 13, 12, 17, 25, 10, 18, 20, 14, 21 represent 40.77% of the winning numbers.
Ball #3 – 20, 35, 31, 25, 37, 26, 32, 24, 23, 38 represent 39.06% of the winning numbers.
Ball #4 – 51, 42, 46, 36, 48, 40, 38, 49 represent 40.77% of the winning numbers.
Ball #5 – 53, 54, 56, 52, 55 represent 42.92% of the winning numbers.
MegaBall – 4, 42, 35, 36, 1, 21, 10, 22, 15, 7, 5, 30, 41, 37 represent 44.64% of the winning numbers.
The numbers 46, 48, 14, 5, 52, 38 and 51 seem to have the shortest amount of time between “wins,” meaning they are numbers that have repeated frequently over the past few years. The number 35 has come up most frequently since data collection began.
There’s no mention of my single-digit versus double-digit theory (which I find shocking, because usually researchers rush to prove and disprove theories that I espouse in casual conversation with friends), but I will continue to stand firmly by my assertion that if there are more numbers between 10-56 than there are between 1-9, odds are you’re going to win by picking only double-digit numbers.
– Today is the last day I will be accepting feedback on the Evanslist entry from last Thursday. I think I have 10 or 11 e-mails I need to write, including three or four to people I’ve never met before. Those should be interesting. I’ve sent personalized top ten lists to Zoya, Ian and Marika already. Remember, leave a comment with your e-mail address and the name of the top ten list you find most humorous, and I’ll send you a very special TOP TEN THINGS I LIKE ABOUT YOU / TOP TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU.
