************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** The oldest scam on the net is the pyramid scheme. I've covered this topic a couple times in my ol' Cyberspace column, from the "Make Money Fast!" chain email to bogus offers of work "stuffing" envelopes (translation: pay $20 for the no-brainer secret that you should resell the no-brainer secret of posting an ad to the net offering work stuffing envelopes). An interesting variant turned up on tor.general a few weeks ago. Just as Super 7 lotto fever was gripping Canada, a Toronto Freenet user was offering netizens the chance to become a multi-level marketer of "Pick-Six-Lotto" lottery software. Multi-level marketing is code for a pyramid scheme where you sell some trinket to keep it all legal like. The people at the first couple levels come away with money while the rest lose. Given the listed system requirements of Pick-Six-Lotto (DOS 2.x, 120K RAM), you might not necessarily be the first on your block to try to turn a buck with this ancient product. No matter. Pick-Six-Lotto, we were told, could calculate "assured winning ticket combinations." The post explained the software's creator had spent a year running "statistical analysis programs" on a whack of 6/49 draws and discovered 50% had a consecutive number combination (for example 12, 13, 22, 29, 32, 41, 44). Zowie, is this a trend those nasty lottery officials are hiding from the public? Nope. It's a result of pure chance. And you don't need to spend a year figuring it out. You can work it out with pencil and paper in ten minutes. I did. Suppose the first number drawn is 12. The odds that the second number is going to be 11 or 13 is roughly 4%. Lets say the second number drawn is 4. We now pin our hopes on the third number, which can be 3, 5, 11, or 13. That's roughly a 9% chance. Suppose our third number comes up 40. If the fourth number is 3, 5, 11, 13, 39, or 41 it will satisfy our two consecutive number condition. That's a 13% chance. By the time we get to the 6th number, there are now 10 possible numbers that will create a two consecutive number combination. That's roughly a 23% chance. If I remember Stats 201 correctly, all those percentages get added to calculate the chance /any/ position will satisfy the condition. So, pure chance assures roughly 66% of winning numbers will, over time, have two consecutive numbers. We can test this hypothesis by looking at a list of winning numbers published at the Lottery Buddy page at bud.ica.net. Between September '96 and September '97, 55% of 6/49 draws had two consecutive numbers. Does this knowledge really improve our odds? Nope. All what you know is more than half the time one of 49 possible numbers in one of five possible positions will be followed by its ordinal kin. It's not the rainbow leading us to the pot of gold. So how can our Freenet friend claim to offer software that picks assured winners? Simple. I assure you 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is going to be a winner ... one day. Not possible? All combinations have equal probability of being drawn. A drawn number has absolutely no influence on what the next number will be. A neatly ordered run only seems more improbable because it defies our psychological expectation of randomness. Another web page lets us test this hypothesis. Lottorobics at www.prefect.com/java24/lottorobics.html can simulate a decade of lottery draws in five minutes flat. I punched in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and let it run for 1042 simulated draws. After spending $1042 on tickets, my highly improbable combination produced about $230 in winnings. Okay, I let it run on a randomly generated combination: 8, 12, 13, 26, 39, 48. Guess what? After 1042 draws, I pocketed $220. I actually did better with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.