Sir, – One has to admire the confidence of the “delighted husband” of the recent lottery winner who said he knew the numbers would come up “at some stage” (Home News, April 4th). The odds are one in 8,145,060 for any particular set of six numbers to be drawn from a choice of 45. Project Maths students will be aware of the formula used to calculate the odds.
However, these odds can also be described another way: if you used the same six numbers in the lottery for the next 8,145,060 times you played, or twice a week for the next 78,318 years, then, statistically, you should win the jackpot once. – Yours, etc,