Curious About Lottery Quick Picks
WBZ
Everyone dreams of hitting the lottery. For some there's a strategy choosing numbers – birthdays, anniversaries and lucky numbers. For others, it's the quick pick that lets the computer decide.
Madeleine in Haverhill Declared her Curiosity:
"The randomness of the lottery quick picks... I bought 10 quick picks and four of them start with the number one and three of them end in 52."
David Wade went inside the lottery for answers.
"It's a random act," said Paul Mandeville of the Mass. State Lottery.
He says every single blue lottery terminal across the state, about 7,500 of them has a built in software called RNG, a random number generator.
So how do they make sure that the same number doesn't come up over and over again? After every drawing a computer will spit out a report and tell them what the most popular and least popular quick pick number.
Last week, 23 was the most popular and 10 was the least popular, but the difference is only about half of one percent.
WBZ asked Mandeville, "If the report said you were using the number six 10 percent of the time, you'd look into it?" He answered, "We'd have a problem with our RNG."
So far, the lottery has had no problems with the software and the repeat numbers are just a product of a small sampling.
"If you flip a coin 10 times, you aren't going to get five heads and five tails, but do it 1,000 times and you'll get closer to 500 of each," said Mandeville.
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