
Ask HN: Are lottery random-picked numbers truly random? - smaili
With all of the latest national buzz on the lottery, a thought crossed my mind: how are random numbers generated by lottery registers?  Are they done locally on the machine itself, or do they make a request to some external service?  Does each store get assigned a subset of number ranges (think subnet masks with IP addresses) to choose from, or is every machine regardless of store&#x2F;location free to select from all possible numbers?
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otras
I highly recommend this relatively recent article from the New York Times:
_The Man Who Cracked the Lottery_. From the relevant Wikipedia page[1]:

 _In 2017, Eddie Raymond Tipton, former information security director of the
American Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), confessed to rigging a random
number generator that he and two others used in multiple cases of fraud
against state lotteries. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison._

[0]:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/03/magazine/mone...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/03/magazine/money-
issue-iowa-lottery-fraud-mystery.html)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Lotto_fraud_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Lotto_fraud_scandal)

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frnkshin
I think the poster is talking about the Quick Pick rather than how the winning
numbers are generated.

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jepler
whoops, I lose at reading comprehension today.

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ArtWomb
I suppose one could buy a 100 tickets and perform a chi-squared test ;)

Even a cursory glance of Powerball frequency charts shows no discernible
pattern.

Looking at the last winning numbers, they certainly seem clustered at the high
end. Still uniform random for a given sample. But certainly not evenly
distributed.

Question you really want to be asking is: does my likelihood increase if I
select the most frequently picked numbers? Advantage is probably minuscule.

Although, I believe there is a strategy in table roulette that exploits "runs"
in which the same number is drawn consecutively. Which for small sample sizes
has a much higher probability of occurring than a long non-repetitive sub-
sequence.

It would be the scandal of the century if the entire lottery were faked.
Centralized database of numbers played. And then a drawing that results in a
"lottery actor" winning for show.

Of course the true scandal is that the real winner of every jackpot is the
IRS!

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Jeremy1026
I think OPs question was more on the "Quick Pick" number selection for
purchased tickets, not for the numbers drawn. Which are done via mechanical
random generation (balls being blown in a case and released one by one).

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jepler
For example, the california lottery uses "draw machines" to draw the balls for
the lottery called SuperLotto Plus.
[https://www.calottery.com/sitecore/content/ARCHIVE/media/fac...](https://www.calottery.com/sitecore/content/ARCHIVE/media/fact-
sheets/draw-procedures) \-- the same page also gives some information about
the powerball procedure.

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Nomentatus
I was thinking this the other day - the best way to finagle the lottery now as
a programmer is not to fiddle with the numbers chosen, but with the random
number generator at the ticket machine (since so many people use it), so that
some numbers or patterns are rare; then buy those and wait 'till they hit.
I'll bet it's being done.

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samfisher83
Someone did this he got up to 25 years in jail:

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-lottery-
ri...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-lottery-rigging-scam-
sentence-20170822-story.html)

~~~
Nomentatus
Thanks for the link - still, this is fiddling with the RNG picking the winner
NOT the quickpik RNG choices at the till as I had envisioned. Plus it's not
doing that in the way I'm thinking about either (even if you decided to alter
the winner-picker algorithm, which isn't necessary on my scheme.)

"predictable numbers only on certain days" is not subtle. (I had known of this
or a similar case when I wrote.) What I'm thinking of is much less traceable -
just an RNG function that happens to leave say, 10% of the numbers as quite
rare. There are easy ways to do this that can plausibly explained as mere
programming errors. (Meaning you won't be convicted, since there's no code
that's definitely tampered with, that couldn't possibly be there unless
someone had the intention of cheating. Just a logic error.) You or your
confederates buy tickets with those rare numbers, with a very positive ROI,
until you're rich. Takes a while.

Putting this on the QuickPic machine at the till means most customers will be
competing for common numbers, so you can scoop up the rare ones.

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segmondy
I personally think the winning machine has a decent random generator but the
machines are crap. I wonder if one can use the FOIA to request the algorithms
running on both machines to see if they are the same. They ought to be.

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joezydeco
Given that the terminal machine can also accept a scanned ticket from a
customer, it would seem to make sense that the terminal generates the Quick
Pick set and transmits it to the backend just as if you had bubbled the paper
yourself.

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sinus17
Above the way random numbers are generated now think the best mathematicians
of the world.

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jepler
The Australian lottery also called powerball (confusingly) apparently
televises their draws, so you can see one style of draw machine in operation
there:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GADfbtqf-P8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GADfbtqf-P8)

