Couple that won lottery twice wins again

[Marilyn. 340]

A woman and her husband, who claims he's developed a formula for lottery picks, have each claimed $350,000 jackpots.

Twice.

Verlyn and Judith Adamson claimed two $350,000 jackpots on Monday because each held a winning ticket in the state SuperCash drawing last Saturday. They didn't mention at the time that they also held two more of the winning tickets.

They claimed those jackpots Thursday. All four were purchased at different locations, but with the same numbers and for the same drawing. Their winnings now amount to $1.4 million, or about $955,000 after taxes.

The Adamsons left a voice message on their phone saying they wouldn't have any public comment and referring any questions to lawyer Scott Thompson.

Small winnings so far

Verlyn Adamson said earlier in the week that he's a big fan of math puzzles. He claims he developed a formula for lottery picks, but his winnings have been small until now.

Thompson said the Adamsons are "exploring patent protection" for the equation.

But Steven Post, a mathematics professor at Edgewood College in Madison, wasn't buying it. He said there is no way to devise a strategy for finding the winning numbers in a game that uses randomly generated numbers to determine the winning combination.

The only strategy would be to "buy all the tickets," he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26350662/

[Niels Bohr 72]

I concur with the prof. It's impossible to predict the chances of winning since each numbers has the same probability of showing up.

http://www.wilottery.com/lottogames/scallfreq.asp

As you can see from this table, the only numbers that have the lowest probability of winning are 37/38/39. All the other numbers have approximately equal chances.

Edited September 5, 2008 by consolemaster

[chri'stina 190]

No fair.