minor prizes

[David]

(08-27-2009 10:15 PM)Frank Wrote:  

(08-27-2009 05:42 PM)David Wrote:  I noticed the minor prizes seemed to have an unusually high number of winners this time.

Did we miss something?

No you didn't miss anything, and the answer is surprisingly simple. Its to do with the 'popularity' of the numbers drawn, especially the lowest 5 balls. When a lotto result contains five or more popular numbers such as numbers less than 32 (Birthday numbers) or the magic number 42, (but in general numbers less than 40) then more people (as a percentage of all the tickets sold) win at least a match 3 prize. Crucially the number of match 3 winners is very large and the prize fund is set up to pay these out first. Then the other lower tier prizes get their share of what is left, and there are likely to be more than usual of these too. Hence the prize amounts are low. The linked spreadsheet UK lotto data shows all the lotto draws to date (data from Merseyworld.com) , and the number of prizewinners for each prize. However, the table also shows the ticket sales and what percentage of entrants won a match 3 prize. This is the last column V.

The data has been sorted in descending order of this percentage in column V. You will notice that the draws at the top have high numbers of minor prize winners. If you cross reference any of those draw numbers with the list of prize money amounts Lotto prizes (click on the appropriate draw number link on that web page) you will also see that the prize money was low. You will aready have noticed from the spreadsheet at the top hundred lines or so that there are not many numbers in blue (numbers more than 31) in the fifth ball position or less and thats why the prize money for the minor prizes was low. The last draw, wed 26th August 2009 is ranked seventh from the top for number of match 3 wins (as a percentage), so hopefully this answers your question.
Conversely at the bottom hundred lines of the table you will see a lot of blue in the results (like draw 1424) , and you will see that the prize money is accordingly high.

Comment :- I tried to attach a proper XLS spreadsheet here but the system wouldn't let me, hence the Google version.

Thanks Frank for that detailed explanation. It is much appreciated.