One day when I was living in upstate New York, the lotto hit $70,000,000. On a whim I bought a couple of tickets. For one of the tickets I chose the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. My friend said I was wasting the ticket, but since any set of numbers has the same probability of coming up, why would it seem weird if these numbers were the winners? Why have they never won the lotto in any state? The train of thought that that question inspired led to this page.

Perhaps due to the frequency it is used as a plot device, people overestimate their chance of winning the lotto. This page will let you know just how bad your odds are in your state, using the standard "n choose k" formula. One interesting thing you can do is to try increasing the number you can choose from by 1 and see how fast the odds increase. Just in case you want to ignore my advice and play the lotto, you also will get a set of "lucky" numbers generated. If you play them and win, you don't even have to give me any of it. :)

My state's lotto has me choose numbers out of .

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