This is a fun (quick and dirty) analysis of winning Powerball numbers to date. Wager at your own risk.

The basic question is whether the Powerball numbers drawn are entirely “Random”. The answer is, not surprisingly, no. The big caveat, of course is that as of 2016-01-10, there have only been 29 drawings under the new rules… Over the long run, these should get closer to “random”. Still, it’s a man-made machine drawing the balls, so it may never be random.

Figure 1: These numbers are over-represented in the winning numbers data. We would only expect a frequency close to 2 if the draws were random.

Figure 2: These numbers are under-represented in the winning numbers data.

Figure 3: These ‘PowerBall’ numbers are under-represented in the winning numbers data. We would expect around one draw per available number.

Interestingly, There are several PowerBall numbers that have yet to come up in any of the drawings…

Never Been Drawn

            3
            8
           12
           14
           16
           23
           24
           26

So, play well, and if you are fortunate enough to win using this information, send me a note at: http://www.twitter.com/dataminerx