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March 30, 2012

Strategies Won't Help You Win Mega Millions

Tonight (March 30) is the drawing for the Mega Millions $640 million prize, the largest lottery jackpot in world history. Americans are lining up for tickets in hopes of winning big tonight, and with staggeringly remote 1-in-176 million odds, they're employing all sorts of number-picking strategies to improve their chances of hitting the jackpot.

But will any of these tricks work? Or does the randomness of a bouncing ball trump any scheme?

In the Mega Millions game, players pay $1 for a ticket printed with six two-digit numbers — numbers they can either choose themselves or have randomly generated by the ticket-seller's computer. Theories abound as to which is the better option, and, for those players who make their own picks, whether certain numbers are more likely to win than others.

However, when a group of researchers in California tested these theories against actual lotto statistics, they concluded that strategies are useless.

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