How Random Are Quick Picks

Random matters when you want to buy your ticket, and decide to use a quick pick.
It may not matter quite as much as the draw results being random, but you do not really want to buy a quick pick if it means hundreds of other people all end up with the same numbers as you.
Because that would mean you would be sharing your jackpot with all of them!
So the lottery company engineers and maths-types go to great lengths to make sure that your lottery terminal spits out some proper random selections. Because being fair is vital to all lottery companies – it determines how much we trust them, and whether or not we buy a ticket!
They do not tell us exactly how their specific machines work, but there is a lot more involved than you might think. It is common to use atmospheric noise or radioactive decay to help ensure random stays random.
Is it impossible for the quick pick software to output the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and a 6 as the Powerball?
Random is of course supposed to mean that any combination is possible.
Obviously you can not get A, B, C, D and E out of the machine since they are not part of the pool of numbers. However, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are.
So if that set of numbers (or any other) could NOT be generated, then surely that would mean there was something wrong with the number generator.
It would be like a loaded dice that would never roll a 6.
The fact is, every combination is highly unlikely. Because there are 175,223,510 of them (and yes, that is more than 175 million different possible results for the US Powerball).
Which means there is a 1-in-175,223,510 chance of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and Powerball 6 being selected.
But there is also a 1-in-175,223,510 chance of 13 , 19 , 23, 33, 57 and Powerball 28 coming out too.
The fact is, they are just as ‘highly unlikely’ as each other, or as any other combination.
So why does one result look ‘more random’ than the other?
Simply because our brains like patterns. We are programmed to see them.
It made the news when Florida picked all consecutive lottery numbers back in 2011.
But there is no pattern as far as the lottery machine is concerned. They are just 5 or 6 differently numbered balls. Nothing more!
They did not even necessarily get picked in that order since the numbers are sorted numerically before they are printed, to make it easy to check the results.
This does NOT prove that the game is rigged. And in actual fact, it should reassure you that the quick pick machine is working perfectly normally since it CAN pick combinations such as the one it gave you.
The Powerball folks really do not need to fix the game since they make plenty of money by operating a perfectly fair and legal draw, regardless of when the jackpot is won. The odds are so tough that it rolls over most draws simply because there are so many more possible results than tickets sold.
So random can really be truly random, even when it does not look like it!
This article along with other lottery tips can be found at http://www.lottotips.cu.cc