Many people cried foul when last night\u2019s Powerball draw produced a basic sequence of winning numbers – 5,6,7,8,9 and the bonus ball, 10.<\/p>\n
There is, however, nothing strange about these numbers and they have exactly the same likelihood of emerging as any other set of six numbers.<\/p>\n
Busisiwe Msizi, head of corporate relations at Ithuba, which runs the national lottery, dismissed any concerns of a rigged draw or system fault.<\/p>\n
She said they use a random number generator which picks random winning numbers in the Lotto draw.<\/p>\n
There is exactly the same chance \u2013 1 in 42 million \u2013 of any six numbers being selected by the random number generator.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the possibility of a system bug or human intervention to get these numbers, Msizi said this is not possible.<\/p>\n
The computerized random number generator used by Ithuba is the same system used by lotteries across the world and is verified and audited.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no human intervention at all with this particular system,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She added that after the numbers are selected, they are sent to their central system and also checked against the independent verification system by auditors.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these numbers have to check out against all of the backup and verification systems,\u201d Msizi said.<\/p>\n
Msizi said while it may be strange for humans to see these numbers come up, it is just another batch of numbers to computers.<\/p>\n
The numbers were also not drawn from smallest to largest. Instead, 8 was drawn first, 5 next, then 9, 7, 6, and 10.<\/p>\n
These were therefore just six random numbers, similar to any other collection of six numbers drawn in the Powerball.<\/p>\n
What is interesting is that all 20 winners picked their numbers manually, with no quick picks via the national lottery system.<\/p>\n
The winners came from Gauteng, Northern Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, and Limpopo.<\/p>\n
Each of the 20 winners will receive R5,688,468.<\/p>\n
Jamie Hale, a researcher specializing in cognitive science and scientific reasoning, explained humans have a tendency to see patterns everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s important when making decisions and judgments and acquiring knowledge – we tend to be uneasy with chaos and chance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, that same tendency to see patterns in everything can lead to seeing things that don\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former NASA scientist Phil Albert added that humans are creatures of habit and trained to recognize false patterns.<\/p>\n
\u201cA true pattern that you miss noticing is more likely to kill you than a false pattern that doesn’t actually exist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Humans, therefore, recognize a pattern in the six consecutive numbers in the lottery draw, where a machine just sees six random numbers out of a possible 50.<\/p>\n
If you look at it from the perspective of the random number generator, it does not even know what 5 or 6 means.<\/p>\n
It simply sees it as a group of 0s and 1s, and the six groups it selected is therefore similar to any other group out of the 42 million combinations.<\/p>\n