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RE: Where's the analysis?

Comment comment by VnutZ on 01 November 2007

I don't suppose you could run that one last time - just restrict the data set to everything newer than June 25, 2005 (I think). That would be version 4, the current game, of MegaMillions.

I'll be the first to admit - statistics was the first math class I actually bombed ... only got a B- and that was years ago. So there are undoubtedly things I did in this analysis that would make a statistician cringe. I'm hoping more that the aggregation of all the different tables will result in something mildly more meaningful that straight random.

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RE: Where's the analysis? by Anonymous :: NR0

Hmm, there are of course two problems if actual balls are used. The normal balls can be unequal ('nope', p-value 0.5131 for v4). And the special balls can be unequal (0.8722).

Ok, the p-values are not significant, but... If actual balls are being used, there will be really tiny differences between balls. So one could currently select:

7 53 5 25 46 - 42

But if prices are shared between winners, one should not select those. Just select some random numbers in the middle...

On the other hand, it could also be that a ball that gets selected is being a little damaged, after which it becomes less likely to be selected. But I expect that a ball that is selected gets smaller and gets even more likely to be selected next time. I did not test for those type of effects yet. :)

Next to that, there could be interactions between balls that get selected together/not together more often. I did not test for them too. Replacement frequency and such is also of influence. Perhaps time for some physical tests? :)

Code (with a small fix):

big=read.table("big.dat",sep="%",fill=T)
big$date=as.Date(apply(big[,1:3],1,paste,collapse="-"))
big$type=ifelse(big$date>="1999-1-13",ifelse(big$date>="2002-3-15",ifelse(big$date>="2005-06-22",4,3),2),1)
chisq.test(table(unlist(big[big$type==4,5:9])),p=rep(1/56,56))
chisq.test(table(unlist(big[big$type==4,10])),p=rep(1/46,46))
z=table(unlist(big[big$type==4,][,5:9]))
z[order(z,decreasing=T)]
z=table(unlist(big[big$type==4,][,10]))
z[order(z,decreasing=T)]
Posted 01 November 2007, Hide, Parent, Reply