Numerous U.S. lotteries have identical winning numbers. Are these drawings truly random?

 In hundreds of U.S. lottery draws, identical winning numbers are found. Are the drawings random?

America's most lucrative lottery drawings, in the which computers randomly choose numbers that make a few lucky winners instant millionaires, are not as random as they appear.

Multiple games have produced identical winning numbers in the United States. Sometimes, these numbers were generated within weeks, months or even days, as a Des Moines Register investigation reveals.

Officials of the lottery, including those who previously expressed concerns about the national lottery, maintain that the repeated numbers are nothing but chance.

Patricia Mayers, spokeswoman of the Wisconsin Lottery said, "While repeats like this are rare and unusual, there is no cause to suspect these numbers were drawn not reasonably."

However, critics of random number drawings claim that similar draws as well as records identifying problems within several states using "random number generators" prove that the fairness, integrity, and fairness of the nation's $80.5 million annual lottery system are at risk.

These critics claim that national oversight is a contributing factor to the problems.

"Lottery officials and state legislators run these rigged games with blinders," said Les Bernal, Stop Predatory Gambling director based in Washington, D.C.

The Register was told by math experts who had studied lottery drawings that it was difficult to know if the same draws were indicative of serious problems without an in-depth examination of the lottery software. But they believe the draws merit a closer inspection.

David Austin, a Grand Valley State University math professor in Michigan, stated that "it suggests there are outliers" and suggested it was worth investigating. Austin has written extensively about the difficulties involved in creating number generators.

Many states have already discovered problems with random number-generated lottery systems, including South Carolina and Arizona.

Professors look at drawings and spot outliers

Register used data from 37 states to identify winning drawings that generated identical winning numbers within 365 day intervals.

The Register only considered games with at least five numbers. This is because there's a lower probability of the same numbers being drawn twice.

Register discovered that in eight cases, identical winning numbers were generated in consecutive drawings for the same games in Arizona Missouri Oregon Oregon Colorado.

Grand Valley State math professor Austin analyzed some of the same-number draws that the Register identified as possible anomalies.

Austin ran over 10,000 simulations to complete his review and found that, while West Virginia's duplicate drawings seemed to match statistical odds, there were several Wisconsin outliers that "deserve investigation."

Austin stated, "Convention would claim that the Wisconsin Lottery Results are statistically significant and even very significant."

Robert Molzon (a retired math professor from the University of Kentucky) agreed.

Molzon explained that it's difficult to test whether lottery computer-generated numbers really are random without having access to the systems.

It is easy to find out the probability that a particular number of "doubles," (identical numbers), will occur over a specified time period. This allows you to evaluate whether there may be a problem.

Molzon found out that some drawings in Wisconsin have outliers, just like Austin. He reviewed sets of winning numbers from lottery draws in Wisconsin and West Virginia over several years.

Molzon stated that "my conclusion is that it's highly unlikely that these numbers chosen in either of the lotteries is truly random." Match Winning Pick Six Numbers Based On Historical Analysis