So You Play the National Lottery: Are You Crazy ?

This talk will describe the simple mathematics behind the National Lottery; explanations will be given of the published odds for winning prizes. More revealingly, the probability of not winning anything will be derived, e.g. that there is a 44% chance of no matches, a 41% chance of 1 match, and a 13% chance of 2 matches. The role of the bonus number will be explained. The probability distribution of the number of jackpot winners in a single week will be derived as the biggest binomial distribution in the world. All these results depend on the assumption that people choose their numbers at random, which they don't ? but Camelot won't tell us how they do ... in case we try to win.