South Africa's lottery probed as 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 drawn

[muriel_volestrangler]

The winning numbers in South Africa's national lottery have caused a stir and sparked accusations of fraud over their unusual sequence.

Tuesday's PowerBall lottery saw the numbers five, six, seven, eight and nine drawn, while the Powerball itself was, you've guessed it, 10.

Some South Africans have alleged a scam and an investigation is under way.

The organisers said 20 people purchased a winning ticket and won 5.7m rand ($370,000; £278,000) each.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-55154525

The regular balls are from 1 to 50, and the Powerball from 1 to 20. So to get a sequence of 5 consecutive normal, and a following Powerball, there are just 15 possibilities. If the Powerball was the first in the sequence, you could add another 20.

I reckon there are 50!/(5!*45!) combinations of the main balls - which is 2,118,760. 14 combinations then have a 2 in 20 chance of then getting a powerball before or after them, and 7 have a 1 in 20, since they can only be completed at one end of the run. I think it ends up as a chance of a run with a powerball at beginning or end of (35/20)/2118760, or 1 in 1,210,720.

Have there been on the order of a million public lottery draws in the world, over time? Possibly, if you include state, regional etc. ones.

[CaptainTruth]

1. One thing a lot of folks don't understand about random chance & statistics...

...is that any given random sequence is just as probable as any other random sequence.

For example, in a truly random draw, 5-6-7-8-9-10 is just as likely as 1-7-3-10-8-4, it's just that we humans assign special meaning to the sequence 5-6-7-8-9-10. We regard it as unique, but the process doesn't care.