lottery: Excel formulae required

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  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I am a novice lottery player and was wondering if it would be ok to
request a excel formula.

Basically I have set up an spreadsheet of past lottery results and I
require excel formulae to enable me to determine and analyze frequency
of repeating doubles, trebles and quad combinations. Which I guess
would be 3 separate formulae. I suppose you wouldn't know the formulae
I could use.

(Please note my excel knowledge is basic but functional and I have
Excel 2002.)

Thanks in advance.

Samuel.

Please remove obvious spam trap if u wish to reply by email.
 
Paul Corrado said:
Samuel,

Not meaning to be a smar#%^ but the best predictor function you could use is

=Rand() or a similar function......
Click to expand...

Paul, I do appreciate my endeavours with reference to the lottery
maybe a trifle frivolous.

I do understand the complexity of task I wish to perform. Presumably I
require a formula to display all possible double combinations for
example. And a array formula to loop through my lottery data and count
how many occurrences of each combination appear.

I have provided further details :

The lottery has 49 balls and 6 balls and the bonus ball are drawn. I
have a lottery table with all lottery results in ( Columns B:H ).

COLUMNS

A B C etc....

date& 1st No 2nd No etc....
draw no 500

Want I require is the most efficient formulae to achieve my aims of
identifying and determining the frequency of repetitive doubles,
triples and quad combinations.

Please note when I stated my excel knowledge is basic, I may have been
doing myself a disservice. My excel level is intermediate with some
understanding of advanced formulae & functions. But due to a lack of
familiarity I was trying to avoid a user-net response using advanced
terminology & excel formulae without a brief explanation of how to
execute it.

Thanks in advance.

Samuel.

Please remove obvious spam trap if u wish to reply by email.
 
...
I do understand the complexity of task I wish to perform. Presumably I
require a formula to display all possible double combinations for
example. And a array formula to loop through my lottery data and count
how many occurrences of each combination appear.
Click to expand...

It's not complex. It's a standard for most introductory courses in probability.
Given a sample of N different numbers selected at random without replacement,
there are N * (N - 1) / 2 possible pairs, and each of those pairs should have
EXACTLY the same 2 / (N * (N - 1)) chance of occurring in any draw of 2 or more.

You could generate the pairs of numbers in {1..49} using the following formulas.

A1 [text constant]:
1 2

A2:
=IF(--RIGHT(A1,2)<49,TRIM(LEFT(A1,2))&" "&(RIGHT(A1,2)+1),
(LEFT(A1,2)+1)&" "&(LEFT(A1,2)+2))

Fill A2 down into A3:A1176. 1176 is rather a large population. If you were
tracking twice a week lottery draws, this represents a bit more than 11 years of
such draws. Balls used in the draws would be changed far more frequently than
this, and the *ONLY* potentially reliable explanation for why some balls *SEEM*
to be drawn more often is that they might be slightly heavier. If balls are
changed once a month, then analyzing historical lottery draws is as reliable as
numerology and astrology.

If you want to improve your chances of winning the lottery, it's simple: buy
more tickets. If you want to maximize your expected wealth, it's also simple:
don't buy any lottery tickets. If your interest is simply academic, using time
series to analyze sun spot series is more interesting.
 
OTOH, most lay people would consider an "introductory courses in probability" to be complex
<vbg>.


..
I do understand the complexity of task I wish to perform. Presumably I
require a formula to display all possible double combinations for
example. And a array formula to loop through my lottery data and count
how many occurrences of each combination appear.
Click to expand...

It's not complex. It's a standard for most introductory courses in probability.
Given a sample of N different numbers selected at random without replacement,
there are N * (N - 1) / 2 possible pairs, and each of those pairs should have
EXACTLY the same 2 / (N * (N - 1)) chance of occurring in any draw of 2 or more.

You could generate the pairs of numbers in {1..49} using the following formulas.

A1 [text constant]:
1 2

A2:
=IF(--RIGHT(A1,2)<49,TRIM(LEFT(A1,2))&" "&(RIGHT(A1,2)+1),
(LEFT(A1,2)+1)&" "&(LEFT(A1,2)+2))

Fill A2 down into A3:A1176. 1176 is rather a large population. If you were
tracking twice a week lottery draws, this represents a bit more than 11 years of
such draws. Balls used in the draws would be changed far more frequently than
this, and the *ONLY* potentially reliable explanation for why some balls *SEEM*
to be drawn more often is that they might be slightly heavier. If balls are
changed once a month, then analyzing historical lottery draws is as reliable as
numerology and astrology.

If you want to improve your chances of winning the lottery, it's simple: buy
more tickets. If you want to maximize your expected wealth, it's also simple:
don't buy any lottery tickets. If your interest is simply academic, using time
series to analyze sun spot series is more interesting.
Click to expand...
 
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