[yeellow]

I read once about a famous mathematician who claimed that whenever he plays lottery he chooses the sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6 because nobody else would. Also it seems strange that so many people would choose a sequence that most people would call "not random" and suspicious (hence the article). Maybe those people follow the advice of this famous mathematician. Authorities should check the occurrence of this series in the previous games to see if that many people really like this sequence or if it was a one time event. Thinking about this, it would be interesting to see what numbers people choose, if there are some outliers preferred by many. I wonder if there are lotteries that publish such data?

[jmharvey]

I've bought the number 1,2,3,4,5,6 on numerous occasions, but my lottery play isn't really representative of the typical player.

A few years back, the Quebec Lottery published its most frequently played numbers. It seems the original press release has been lost to the sands of time, but IIRC 1,2,3,4,5,6; 1,7,13,19,25,31; and 4,8,15,16,23,42 were the most common sequences (corresponding to the top row of the play slip, the first column of the play slip, and the mystical numbers from the TV show Lost, respectively).

Oh, and if you're interested in digging more, in my experience, the Texas lottery is quite forthcoming with their open records; you could probably find out what's popular in 2022.

[thegabriele]

From an algorithmic information theory, i wouldn't choose any easily reproducible sequence.

If you were presented with two array of integers:

- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

- 95, 10, 39, 45, 6, 47

...which one would you say it's random?

Still, from a frequentist point of view both are.

Where's my mistake?

[hackandthink]

Algorithmically random sequence

"Martin-Löf's key insight was to use the theory of computation to formally define the notion of a test for randomness."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmically_random_sequenc...

(now famous for type theory, Per Martin-Löf did Probability Theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Martin-L%C3%B6f#Randomness...

[lupire]

You are correct. PP's mathematician was making a bold psychological/sociological claim. Maybe he has seen some research to that effect, but I doubt it.

[yeellow]

Yes, of course he knew that all occurrences are equally probable, but he took into consideration what other people bet. Anyway as I remember when asked about that strategy few years later he said he changed the sequence (to 2,3,4,5,6,7 or something similar) to avoid potential prize sharing with people who followed his advice.