shriracha
10 months ago
Hi! I made this tool. I saw it had way more traffic than usual and then realized it was from HN, very cool!
Would love to hear any feedback. I've been super interested in how well-designed web apps and visualizations can communicate things like probability, which I think is very hard to intuit for many of us.
The most surprising thing I learned from the tool was just how bad your payouts usually were even if you cut the pool of numbers to pick from in half (by using the "Custom" option).
BitwiseFool
10 months ago
I would very much like to see an even faster "turbo" option because even though the current max speed of 1,000 tickets a second really drives home the point of how long it would take to actually win, I still want to see the simulation hit the jackpot a few times.
Retric
10 months ago
Reading people’s replies it seems like many are misunderstanding the expected value of a ticket. You may want to add another column to the table of odds showing what percentage a ticket’s hypothetical payout is from each prize, or just what the average loss per ticket is.
Also, at one point I messed up which pattern on Mega Millions tickets were winners. Something about that big X in a separate column just subconsciously seemed like it was showing winners. Perhaps dashes vs checks or groupings winning and non winning tickets together.
airstrike
10 months ago
I did the same when I tried to create my own lottery. Thought the "correct" icons were the "wrong guess" ones and vice-versa
Vullun
10 months ago
I noticed that when you select pick random numbers, it only picks it once. Can we run the simulation where it picks new numbers every time? I would love to see if that would make an impact on the odds.
sfilmeyer
10 months ago
>I would love to see if that would make an impact on the odds.
It won't make an impact on the odds of your tickets coming up as winners, unless they have a bug in their simulation. In the real world the probability of single versus multiple jackpot winners might vary with number choices, but they've already said they're assuming a single jackpot winner.
earle_wa
10 months ago
Can you track how many people have hit the jackpot? Or how long folks stuck around to see if they hit the jackpot?
Popeyes
10 months ago
Really good tool, I made a very basic text one and showed a few friends and it put them off the lottery.
One suggestion I would make is allowing the random numbers selected by the user to be random for each draw. I understand in the scheme of things that it doesn't make difference to your odds but that's a strategy that some people play.
It would also be cool to track how many other people chose the same numbers that you did and then divide the jackpot winnings by that amount of people.
Another thing (I'm really just giving you a todo list of things that I had) was to organise the number selectors to mirror the pattern on the lottery tickets. People have very different approaches, picking columns, going over 31, sequences and you could track the user behaviour behind number selection.
user
10 months ago
rerdavies
10 months ago
Select random numbers greater than 31, and run them against past winning numbers, using the actual prize pool payouts (histories available for all major lotteries). Repeat millions of times. You'll be amazed how much more money you win. ;-P (And how much money you still lose even with this impressive advantage).Unfortunately, there aren't enough historical draws to determine whether there are more fine-grained statistically-significant differences. My tests were actually run on first-half vs. last half. But > 31 seems like a defensible rule as well.
SillyUsername
10 months ago
What probability distribution are you using for the random numbers?
twitexplore
10 months ago
I expected the "Winnings:" mouse-over on the frequency chart to tell me the total amount won on that $ category (count*single winning). On MS Edge it just shows "Count: 4033\nWinnings: $2"
tirant
10 months ago
Custom option needs more options: some big lotteries use two extra numbers (e.g. Euromillions). Other lotteries just pick up a single number from 00000 to 99999 (or even lower).
hakonslie
10 months ago
I never use Lotteries, but I was curious and wanted to test a domestic one, however the bonus number can be from 1 to 5, but I cant put it lower than 10 on your page :'(
athorax
10 months ago
It might just be me, but it took me awhile to even realize there were interactive components on the page. Something about it made it seem like they were screenshots.
futurabold
10 months ago
The site's newsletter module is broken. Won't accept my email.
is_true
10 months ago
wow, it's really good and the rest of your site is even better
gstrike
10 months ago
[dead]
Grum9
10 months ago
[dead]
hitthejackpot
10 months ago
[flagged]
robofanatic
10 months ago
buy a real lottery ticket
hitthejackpot
10 months ago
[flagged]