Professional Documents
Culture Documents
OF
LOTTERY
CALCULAT
ION
LOTTERY
MATHEMATICS
Contents
1.0 INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3
2.0 METHODOLOGY.....................................................................................................................................4
2.1 PROBABILITY......................................................................................................................................4
2.2 COMBINATION...................................................................................................................................4
2.3 PSEUDO-CODE...................................................................................................................................4
6.0 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................................11
2
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Lottery mathematics is used here to mean the calculation of the probabilities in
a lottery game. The lottery game used in this is one in which one selects 5 different winning
letters from the letters A-Z randomly, and hopes that as many of those 5 as possible match the
5 that are randomly selected from the same pool of 26 letters in the "draw"..
On each ticket 5 different letters must be appeared .Also each ticket has a different
combination of letters printed on it. The “draw” will be on once a week & there 5 winning
letters are randomly chosen.
Each person buying a ticket for the lottery must pays for it & according to the
selected winning letters appear on their ticket, the prizes are awarded. The order of the letters
does not matter for winning prizes.
The target of this report is mainly to analyze that how the prizes be divided & how
the tickets spread out in each prizes. When calculating those algorithms, probability methods &
combination methods are directly used.
Have to identify new scheme based criteria for lottery calculations. So the methods
are implemented using pseudo-code to clearly grab the main points .The report discusses about
these new schemes.
These data are useful when comes to the cost effectiveness of the lottery for the
people who associate with.
3
2.0 METHODOLOGY
2.1 PROBABILITY
The probability of an outcome of a particular event happening is the chance or
likelihood of it happening. We all have an intuitive understanding of whether something is likely
to happen, but mathematically we can determine how likely something is exactly.
This is the standard way to calculate probability. You count up the total number of
outcomes that match the condition you are interested in and divide it by the total number of
outcomes that could possibly happen:
Two events are said to be independent if they cannot influence or affect each other.
2.2 COMBINATION
A combination is the selection of a certain number of objects taken from a group of
objects without regard to order.
2.3 PSEUDO-CODE
4
3.0 PRESENTATION OF DATA
Lucky letters in a lottery is a selection of 5 different letters chosen at random from
the alphabet letters A-Z.As appear on each ticket; there will be printed different combinations
of 5 letters. Weekly 5 winning letters are randomly chosen from a draw which includes all 26
letters or desired letters.
All prizes are cash rewards & awarded depending on the number of letters on ticket,
which map with the winning letters. Here is the value of prizes relevant to the number of
winning letters:
IMPLEMENTED FUNCTIONS
5
4.0 ANALYSIS & INTERPRETATION
So the largest number of tickets that could be sold in a week explained with
calculation below in choosing 5 from 26.
Starting with a selection of 26 A-Z letters, there are 26 different but equally
likely ways of choosing the first letter selected from the selection of letters. When the selection
comes to the second letter, there are now only 25 letters left .Because the letters already
selected are not returned for the selection again. Thus for each of the 26 ways of choosing the
first letter there are 25 different ways of choosing the second. On selection the third letter
there are 24 ways of choosing it. This continues until the fifth letter has been selected, giving
26 !
the final calculation, 26×25×24×23×22, which can also be written as .The last step is to
( 26−5 ) !
understand that the order of 5 letters is not significant. That is, if a ticket has the letters A,B,C,D
& E, it wins as long as all the letters A-E are drawn, no matter what order they come out in.
According, given any set of 5 letters, there are 5×4×3×2×1 = 5! In which they could be drawn.
26 !
Dividing by 5! or more generally as from the combinations formula
( 26−5 ) !
26 !
n=26 & k=5 ; 26C5= 5! (26−5 ) ! =65780 gives the largest
6
At a weekly draw, 5 lucky letters are drawn from a range of 26 letters A-Z. If
the 5 letters on a ticket match the lucky letters drawn, the ticket holder is a winner for the
grand prize of the lottery. This is true no matter in which order the letters appear.
The numerator equates to the number of ways one can select the winning
letters multiplied by the number of ways one can select the losing letters.
Number of
matching Approximate Decimal
Prize letters(n) Calculation Exact Probability Probability
10,000 3 0.032
50,000 4 0.0016
100,000 5 0.000015
The probability of winning a ticket 0.033615
For a prize of Rs. M which can win from a n number of lucky letters printed
on a ticket (for example, if 3 of your letters printed on the lottery match the 5 lucky letters
drawn, then n=3), there are 5Cn ways of selecting n winning numbers from the 5 lucky letters.
This means that there are 5-n losing letters, which are chosen from the 21 losing letters in 21C(5-n)
ways. So the total number of combinations giving that result is, as stated above, the first
5C n ×21 C(5−n)
number multiplied by the second. The expression is there for which varies
26C 5
from the value n. The following table gives the probability that winning each prize; Figure 4.1
As Figure 4.1 shows, the chance of a ticket winning a prize approximately 0.033 which is
roughly 1 in 30.
7
4.4 CALCULATING THE REVENUE OF THE LOTTERY
Assuming a time, when all possible tickets are sold & all cash prizes are given away, here
is the calculation for the revenue of the lottery.
=∑ ¿¿ letters)
= Rs. 26,350,000
= The income received from the lottery - The cash for prizes
= 1,315,600 - 26,350,000
= Rs. - 25,034,400
We can see that at above time assumed, there is a loss of Rs. 25,034,400.00 by the
lottery.
8
Array PrintedTickets []= randsample(PossibleAllTickets[],
((PossibleAllTickets.length*70)/100));
N=3
// DO WHILE loop to calculate the number of winning tickets for each prize in
a given week
DO{
// add all combinations of N letters from 5 winning letters to array
TicketsWithWinningLetters[]=(5,N);
N=N+1;
}
WHILE N<6
9
4.6 SUGGESTION TO GET THE AVERAGE OF WINNING TICKETS
To maintain a lottery in long run, there we want to discuss new suggestion. Here from
above pseudo code we can get the number of tickets winning each prize in a weekly draw. So
we can calculate the number of winning tickets at any prize weekly. It’s difficult to do
practically, but from a automated computer program like above pseudo code we can calculate
winning tickets weekly & store that data weekly calculated in a data base. So after a month or a
year we can calculate the average number of winning tickets from the equation below.
The average number of winning tickets=The total number of winning tickets in the whole year
10
6.0 CONCLUSION
Possible number of winning tickets for each prize when all possible tickets are printed:
Prize 100,000 = 1
A chance of a winning ticket is roughly 1/30 when all possible tickets are printed.
11