ST 380 Project Proposal: Lottery Winnings
Team Members: Allison Camras, Michelle Cipullo, Megan Embrey, Cassie Mentha
Description: For our project we would like to explore the odds of winning the lottery, and what
number sequence would be most likely to win. Instead of looking at the Powerball game, as
most other experiments have, we’ll concentrate on the Carolina Pick 3 and the Carolina Pick 4.
These games have lower jackpot amounts ($500-$5,000 vs. $25 million), so maybe their odds of
winning will be greater. We are also looking to compare the chances of winning the Carolina
Pick 3 to the chances of winning the Carolina Pick 4. Also, these two games pick each number
independently. For the Pick 3, there are 3 different chambers with numbered balls ranging from
0-9, and one ball is chosen from each chamber. The same goes for the Pick 4, just with 4
chambers and 4 different balls selected. Once we have our data, we will enter it into R. We will
enter the data by slot number, meaning, we will enter all of the numbers drawn for the first slot
as one set, all the numbers drawn for the second slot in another set, etc. This way, we can make
histograms and box plots for each slot and see which number is drawn most often for each slot.
With these methods, we hope to conclude what the most likely sequence of numbers will be
drawn for both the Pick 3 and the Pick 4. We would also like to look at the ratio of the number
of drawings to the number of actual winners, and compare the ratio for the Pick 3 to that of the
Pick 4. We would also like to compare the chances of winning either of these lottery games to
the chances of being struck by lightning, hit by a tornado, or other phenomena.
Data Set: http:/ /www.nc-educationlottery.org/games.aspx
We will be using this website for our data set. At this website, click “Past Drawings” in both the
Carolina Pick 3 ( http:/ /www.nc-educationlottery.org/pick3_past.aspx) and Carolina Pick 4
(http:/ /www.nc-educationlottery.org/pick4_past.aspx ) sections. From there, we can choose
every month and every year back to October 2006 for the Pick 3 and April 2009 for the Pick 4.
For the Pick 4, there’s one drawing every day and for the Pick 3, there’s 2 drawings every day
(daytime and evening) except for Sundays (only evening).