Lottery Mathematics - Calculation Explained in Choosing 6 From 49

Calculation Explained in Choosing 6 From 49

In a typical 6/49 game, six numbers are drawn from a range of 49 and if the six numbers on a ticket match the numbers drawn, the ticket holder is a jackpot winner—this is true no matter in which order the numbers appear. The probability of this happening is 1 in 13,983,816.

This small chance of winning can be demonstrated as follows:

Starting with a bag of 49 differently-numbered lottery balls, there are 49 different but equally likely ways of choosing the number of the first ball selected from the bag, and so there is a 1 in 49 chance of predicting the number correctly. When the draw comes to the second number, there are now only 48 balls left in the bag (because the balls already drawn are not returned to the bag) so there is now a 1 in 48 chance of predicting this number.

Thus for each of the 49 ways of choosing the first number there are 48 different ways of choosing the second. This means that the probability of correctly predicting 2 numbers drawn from 49 in the correct order is calculated as 1 in 49 × 48. On drawing the third number there are only 47 ways of choosing the number; but of course we could have gotten to this point in any of 49 × 48 ways, so the chances of correctly predicting 3 numbers drawn from 49, again in the correct order, is 1 in 49 × 48 × 47. This continues until the sixth number has been drawn, giving the final calculation, 49 × 48 × 47 × 46 × 45 × 44, which can also be written as . This works out to a very large number, 10,068,347,520, which is much bigger than the 14 million stated above.

The last step is to understand that the order of the 6 numbers is not significant. That is, if a ticket has the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, it wins as long as all the numbers 1 through 6 are drawn, no matter what order they come out in. Accordingly, given any set of 6 numbers, there are 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 6! or 720 orders in which they could be drawn. Dividing 10,068,347,520 by 720 gives 13,983,816, also written as 49! / (6! × (49 - 6)!), or more generally as

.

This function is called the combination function; in Microsoft Excel, this function is implemented as COMBIN(n, k). For example, COMBIN(49, 6) (the calculation shown above), would return 13,983,816. For the rest of this article, we will use the notation . "Combination" means the group of numbers selected, irrespective of the order in which they are drawn.

An alternative method of calculating the odds is to never make the erroneous assumption that balls must be selected in a certain order. The odds of the first ball corresponding to one of the six chosen is 6/49; the odds of the second ball corresponding to one of the remaining five chosen is 5/48; and so on. This yields a final formula of

The range of possible combinations for a given lottery can be referred to as the "number space". "Coverage" is the percentage of a lottery's number space that is in play for a given drawing.