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The Amazing Lottery Vault!

Thanz

Fuzzy Thinker
Thanz
Joined
Jul 24, 2002
Messages
3,895
There is a website claiming to increase your chances of winning the lottery, using a bunch of high level math algorithms and stuff “like trend analysis, linear- and route-regression, Fourier analysis, chaos theory - and other systems that make your head spin.” They claim that this is from a mathematician friend of theirs who studies things that look random, but really aren’t - just like the Lottery!

So, they took his work, tweaked it and adapted it as necessary, and made it so that you have a better chance of winning the lottery! Trust the miracles of math you can’t possibly understand and you could be rich!

Anyhow, it is obvious to me that this pitch is for the, shall we say, math-challenged, as their special deal is this:
So if you secure your Lottery Vault™ membership today I am going to extend to you an incredible 50% discount - but please remember I reserve the right to discontinue this discount offer at any time and without notice. Don't delay one second and miss out on this one-time offer because as soon as we have the data we're looking for the price could be set back to our normal annual rate.
Click on the link below and sign up for The Lottery Vault™ right now for only $59.99 $34.95.
Click to expand...

So, if you believe that 34.95 is 50% off 59.99, the Lottery vault is for you!

Site: http://www.lotteryvault.com/index.html

On a more serious note, is it possible to more accurately predict something like the lottery? I know that there was a mathematician that figured out the algorithm that the Montreal Casino Keno computer used to generate the “random” numbers, but is such a thing possible with the generic balls in the big drum thing?
 
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In short, no. The odds will always be n! for a ball to come up in a physical lottery. Reverse engineering a computer keno game is different as a computer is stuck using an algorithm to generate the semi-random numbers.
 
Thanz said:
On a more serious note, is it possible to more accurately predict something like the lottery? I know that there was a mathematician that figured out the algorithm that the Montreal Casino Keno computer used to generate the “random” numbers, but is such a thing possible with the generic balls in the big drum thing?
Click to expand...

A friend of mine who was a senior engineering student at the time, believed that ball lotteries were deterministic (because the balls enter the drum in exactly the same way, would the drum always produce a completely random result? I neither know, nor care, but he believed it). He wanted to write a program that crunched all of the historical numbers, came up with patterns, and that the output data could be sold.

His idea missed the obvious that predicting the lottery eliminates the need for selling goods... or maybe he was more clever/cynical than I give him credit for. :cool:
 
Deterministic does not mean predictable. Chaotic systems are deterministic, yet not predictable.
 
roger said:
Deterministic does not mean predictable. Chaotic systems are deterministic, yet not predictable.
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True.

A problem lies in not remembering the exact words spoken. Simply put, he thought if the balls enter the drum the same way every week (true), then over time, some pattern must emerge. I thought the whole idea was stupid. He must have too, because I haven't seen his name in the press lately.
 
Jimbo07 said:
True.

A problem lies in not remembering the exact words spoken. Simply put, he thought if the balls enter the drum the same way every week (true), then over time, some pattern must emerge. I thought the whole idea was stupid. He must have too, because I haven't seen his name in the press lately.
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Or, he has teamed up with The Lottery Vault to share his vision with the world!
 
Thanz said:
Or, he has teamed up with The Lottery Vault to share his vision with the world!
Click to expand...

Amazing that when I read your first post I immediately thought of him... I haven't even thought of him in a while, much less talked to him.
 
Every set of numbers has a pattern (an infinite number of them, actually).

Whether that pattern has predictive power is another thing entirely.
 
I'm sure this Lottery Vault thing will do well - given the general public's inability to grasp very simple probability theory, bamboozling them with talk of Fourier Analysis and Chaos Theory will doubtless have some of the poor dupes parting with their life savings. I always used to enjoy asking people if they would like to know how to double their chances of a lottery win - when they excitedly replied "yes", I told them they just had to buy two tickets :)

The idea of finding patterns due to a predictability in the drawing mechanism is probably ok in the realms of pure theory - but pragmatically it is impossible - it would surely rely on all variables remaining totally constant - I would imagine an infinitessimal change in the drum rotation speed/ time between ball release and ball selection/ atmsopheric conditions etc would lead to totally different results, and so whilst the theory may be nice, in the real world it will be of no value as there will surely be a practically infinite number of variations of these variables.
 
Jimbo07 said:
A friend of mine who was a senior engineering student at the time, believed that ball lotteries were deterministic (because the balls enter the drum in exactly the same way, would the drum always produce a completely random result? I neither know, nor care, but he believed it).
Click to expand...
Think of it this way. If the best pool players in the world can't hit a ball into another ball into another ball into another ball with sufficient accuracy to get the 4th ball into a 3" hole, how likely is it that someone will accidentally drop 49 balls into a drum with sufficient accuracy for them to follow exactly the same paths over many thousands of collisions?
 
Thanz said:
I know that there was a mathematician that figured out the algorithm that the Montreal Casino Keno computer used to generate the “random” numbers, but is such a thing possible with the generic balls in the big drum thing?
Click to expand...
He was not a mathematician, but a computer consultant. Daniel Corriveau won 600,000$ by guessing 3 times the winning combination (19/20 numbers) at the keno machine.

He simply notices that at each time the keno machine was reseted, it was reinitialized with the same pseudo-random list of number. Either a chip was missing in the keno machine or the software was restarted in a "debug mode" originally useful for the programmer of the keno machine software. Corriveau simply noticed that the initial series was always the same and he profited from this knowledge. No fancy mathematical calculation.

What we will probably nerver know is whether he had prior knowledge that the pseudo-random number initialization chip was missing and who took it off.

After 2 weeks of inquiry the casino finaly paid him the 600,000$

nimzo
 
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nimzov said:
He was not a mathematician, but a computer consultant. Daniel Corriveau won 600,000$ by guessing 3 times the winning combination (19/20 numbers) at the keno machine.

He simply notices that at each time the keno machine was reseted, it was reinitialized with the same pseudo-random list of number. Either a chip was missing in the keno machine or the software was restarted in a "debug mode" originally useful for the programmer of the keno machine software. Corriveau simply noticed that the initial series was always the same and he profited from this knowledge. No fancy mathematical calculation.

What we will probably nerver know is whether he had prior knowledge that the pseudo-random number initialization chip was missing and who took it off.

After 2 weeks of inquiry the casino finaly paid him the 600,000$

nimzo
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I thought that the issue was that the machine's manufacturer had designed the machine with the assumption that the machine would be on 24 hours each day, as virtually all Las Vegas keno machines are. The Canadian casino was not open twenty-four hours each day and they saw no harm in turning off the machine each night. Corriveau claimed he had no prior knowledge and that he was there to record numbers for some work on chaos theory.

I know that the casino initially refused to pay him, but I don't know if he ever got the money.
 
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Ladewig said:
I know that the casino initially refused to pay him, but I don't know if he ever got the money.
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For what I know, he got paid. But he had to share the money with 2 person who were helping him record the numbers.

So he finally got approximately 200,000$ for himself.

nimzo
 
Cecil said:
Think of it this way. If the best pool players in the world can't hit a ball into another ball into another ball into another ball with sufficient accuracy to get the 4th ball into a 3" hole, how likely is it that someone will accidentally drop 49 balls into a drum with sufficient accuracy for them to follow exactly the same paths over many thousands of collisions?
Click to expand...

They can't do a 4th ball into a hole? How about 3 balls? Some of them are pretty darned good, and like to do tricks.

Anyway, I think any 'pattern' that might emerge from historical lottery data would be largely irrelevant...
 
Given that many state and multi-state lottery websites make available lists of previous numbers in the order drawn, I think that they, like Las Vegas casinos, know that system players are a sure source of revenue.
 
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