You can guarantee a win in every draw of the UK National Lottery by buying just 27 tickets, say a pair of mathematicians 鈥� but you won鈥檛 necessarily make a profit.
While there are many variations of lottery in the UK, players in the standard 鈥淟otto鈥� choose six numbers from 1 to 59, paying 拢2 per ticket. Six numbers are randomly drawn and prizes are awarded for tickets matching two or more.
and at the University of Manchester, UK, claim that despite there being 45,057,474 combinations of draws, it is possible to guarantee a win with just 27 specific tickets. They say this is the optimal number, as the same can鈥檛 be guaranteed with 26.
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The proof of their idea relies on a mathematical field called finite geometry and involves placing each of the numbers from 1 to 59 in pairs or triplets on a point within one of five geometrical shapes, then using these to generate lottery tickets based on the lines within the shapes. The five shapes offer 27 such lines, meaning that 27 tickets bought using those numbers, at a cost of 拢54, will hit every possible winning combination of two numbers.
Their research yielded a specific list of 27 tickets (see above), but they say subsequent work has shown that there are two other combinations of 27 tickets that will also guarantee a win.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been thinking about this problem for a few months. I can鈥檛 really explain the thought process behind it,鈥� says Cushing. 鈥淚 was on a train to Manchester and saw this [shape] and that鈥檚 the best logical [explanation] I can give.鈥�
Looking at the winning numbers from the 21 June Lotto draw, the pair found their method would have won 拢1810. But the same numbers played on 1 July would have matched just two balls on three of the tickets 鈥� still a technical win, but giving a prize of just three 鈥渓ucky dip鈥� tries on a subsequent lottery, each of which came to nothing.
Stewart says proving that 27 tickets could guarantee a win was the easiest part of the research, while proving it is impossible to guarantee a win with 26 was far trickier. He estimates that the number of calculations needed to verify that would be 10165, far more than the number of atoms in the universe.聽鈥淭here鈥檇 be absolutely no way to brute force this,鈥� he says.
The solution was a computer programming language called Prolog, developed in France in 1971, which Stewart says is the 鈥渉ero of the story鈥�. Unlike traditional computer languages where a coder sets out precisely what a machine should do, step by step, Prolog instead takes a list of known facts surrounding a problem and works on its own to deduce whether or not a solution is possible. It takes these facts and builds on them or combines them in order to slowly understand the problem and whittle down the array of possible solutions.
鈥淵ou end up with very, very elegant-looking programs,鈥� says Stewart. 鈥淏ut they are quite temperamental.鈥�
Cushing says the research shouldn鈥檛 be taken as a reason to gamble more, particularly as it doesn鈥檛 guarantee a profit, but hopes instead that it encourages other researchers to delve into using Prolog on thorny mathematical problems.
A spokesperson from Camelot, the company that operates the lottery, told New 杏吧原创 that the paper made for 鈥渋nteresting reading鈥�.
鈥淥ur approach has always been to have lots of people playing a little, with players individually spending small amounts on our games,鈥� they say. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also important to bear in mind that, ultimately, Lotto is a lottery. Like all other National Lottery draw-based games, all of the winning Lotto numbers are chosen at random 鈥� any one number has the same and equal chance of being drawn as any other, and every line of numbers entered into a draw has the same and equal chance of winning as any other.鈥�
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