A STATISTICS expert has warned that playing certain patterns for the lottery may not help how some believe it does — there's only one way to play to win big.
In an exclusive conversation with The U.S. Sun, Mark Glickman, a senior lecturer at Harvard University, noted that Mega Millions' quick picks and random number generators offer the only true advantage.
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Glickman, who is also a senior statistician for the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research (COIN), said that number patterns when playing lottery games like the Powerball or Mega Millions, give no statistical advantage.
In fact, the "bad" patterns will actually hurt players if they win, according to the senior statistician, as it could mean they're more likely to share winnings with someone else.
“The real issue is any set of numbers that you pick is going to be equally likely to win as any other set of picks," Glickman said of picking lottery numbers in general.
He continued that patterns are often known or discovered by others, meaning they will also try to use them.
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"If you end up selecting a bunch of numbers that are similar to other people, then if you did win, you would end up splitting the prize with everybody else or with all the people who ended up selecting that set of numbers," the Harvard lecturer told The U.S. Sun.
"The only real place that you could have any kind of like real strategy with your selection of your picks is making sure that you pick a sets of numbers that are not likely to be shared by other people.”
That's why, per Glickman, the only "established strategy is really to pick a bunch of numbers that don't really have much of a pattern.”
Mega Millions random number generator option or any selector that provides unpredictable selections would also be the only advantage lottery players have, and it still doesn't give them better chances at winning.
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Glickman stressed that random selections merely increase chances of not sharing a prize, not obtaining the prize itself.
"This isn't like improving your chance by avoiding those numbers," Glickman noted of patterned selections.
"All it's doing is, it's just simply saying that if you end up winning with whatever selection you make, there's less of a chance that you're gonna split it with other people.”
The statistician's rules on patterns also apply for any advantages that players might feel they have with artificial intelligence on their side.
As The U.S. Sun previously reported, an AI expert and TikToker attempted to win the the New Jersey Mega Millions drawing using an algorithm to predict the lucky numbers.
The influencer, Jacob Seeger (@jacob.seeger), admitted by the end of his clip after being unsuccessful that it "turns out it's actually f*cking impossible to predict these numbers because it's completely random."
Glickman agreed, and told The U.S. Sun that AI can't possibly offer any statistical advantage due to the randomness of the lottery game.
"I don't think AI is gonna give you any [advantage] in this situation,” senior statistician said.
"You would probably be interested in using AI is if there's some pattern to be found."
He added: "I don't believe that there's any patterns that you could assess or evaluate over time to inform what the next set of numbers is going to be because it really is truly random — AI is not going to be able to tell you anything.”
For Glickman, given the lottery's randomness, not even a AI can help given that it's based off of patterns.
The only way to best play lotteries like Mega Millions and the Powerball is to make random choices.
Glickman also debunked an edge and corners selection theory from Rutgers University math professor, Rong Chen.
In an interview, Chen suggested that edge and corner numbers would be a pattern that could offer a statistical advantage given other players' tendencies to choose numbers related to personal events in their life, such as birthdays.
"Numbers with a strong pattern or those larger than 31 could prove more advantageous as many lottery players stick with birthdays as their lucky numbers, Chen said.
This also includes “numbers on the edge and corners of the ticket form that you fill out."
Although Glickman argued there's still no advantage in that pattern to increase chances of winning.
"There's no pattern formed by like corners of a ticket. Nothing like that is going on,” he told The U.S. Sun.
"The numbers that are at the corners that, that's not gonna help at all.”
However, Glickman did agree with Chen that the lottery is a losing game, and that given that, the most statistically advantageous way to play is getting a ticket sparingly for when the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot is at a considerably high amount.
"The most likely outcome is that you're going to lose money on any given play,” Glickman noted.
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For more related content, check out The U.S. Sun's coverage of a lottery winner who claimed they cashed in on $1million using a strategy of buying the same tickets.
The U.S. Sun also has the story on a winner who said they turned $20 into $1million using an unconventional strategy.
