As you stare at your credit card bill this January, you may not feel so merry and bright.
You spent all this money buying all the right gifts, and all you received in return was an Electronic Fancy Pants Jinglin’ Santa from Walgreens and a spray-cologne bottle of Earth, Wind and Fire.
You feel like a loser, and your bank account is redder than Rudolph’s nose. But ho-ho- hold the phone, Mr. Bill Collector. Computer programmer Anthony Bailey wants to make you a winner.
How? The lottery.
Tired of writing programs to tally inventory at the Piggly Wiggly, Bailey started looking at the history of winning numbers in the lottery of his home state of Virginia.
He launched a program on his Web site www.mypick3.com for Illinois’ Pick 3, and he expects to complete his program for the Pick 4 this week.
“Exact order odds posted by the Illinois lottery [for Pick 3] are one in a thousand. My ]program’s] average for exact is one in 20,” Bailey said. “Our best week for Illinois is we hit 11 out of the 13 draws.”
Before you start shopping for the Ferrari and the sterling silver nose-hair trimmer, science journalist Andrew Skolnick of Forest Park offers his analysis.
“Well-shuffled playing cards and lottery balls may not produce truly random numbers,” Skolnick said. “Nevertheless the numbers they produce are randomlike enough for honest games of chance. If certain balls in a lottery game have a terribly small chance of popping out more than others, knowing this would only give a person a terribly small extra chance of winning.”
The bottom line: There’s a good chance we’ll all continue to be losers.
I’m no financial expert, but I would imagine real strategy and science would include taking your Pick 3 ticket money and your $9 for a cup ofSuper-duper-deluxe-skim-half-decaf-cin namon-latte-grande-with-an-extra-shot-of-espresso-and-room-for-Frangelica from Starbucks and invest it in a decent mutual fund.
