Lottery mathematics Lottery mathematics Lottery mathematics is used to calculate probabilities of winning or losing a lottery game. It is based heavily on combinatorics, particularly the twelvefold way and combinations without replacement. In a typical 6/49 game, each player chooses six distinct numbers from a range of 1-49. If the six numbers on a ticket match the numbers drawn by the lottery, the ticket holder is a jackpot winner—regardless of the order of the numbers. The probability of this happening is 1 in 13,983,816. The chance of winning can be demonstrated as follows: The first number drawn has a 1 in 49
Lottery mathematics winning numbers from the 6 winning numbers. This means that there are 6 - n losing numbers, which are chosen from the 43 losing numbers in formula_8 ways. The total number of combinations giving that result is, as stated above, the first number multiplied by the second. The expression is therefore formula_9. This can be written in a general form for all lotteries as: formula_10 where formula_11 is the number of balls in lottery, formula_12 is the number of balls in a single ticket, and formula_13 is the number of matching balls for a winning ticket. The generalisation of this