Those who have read the script for MegaBall$ often point out the suspension of belief needed to accept that there could be a possible mathematical solution to predicting lottery numbers. After all, numbers are randomly drawn. The odds of picking all 6 of the Powerball numbers are i in 292,201,338. You have better chance of being killed on the way to purchasing the ticket. Richard Lustig, who was going to make a cameo in our film but recently passed away, won seven grand prizes.
However, there have been two documented cases were algorithms have done very well!
One was a case where a group of MIT students gamed the system in Massachusetts in 2005, winning millions. They found a flaw in the state run game called “Cash WinFall.” They won millions, and it led to the state to changing the game. Read more HERE, HERE and HERE.
More recently, Stefan Mandel, a Romanian-born Australian mathematician/economist, defied the 1 in 14 million odds and won 12 major wins. READ MORE.
So the concept is not totally impossible, and there is a grain of truth to what our inept would-be heroes attempt in MegaBall$. Hey, you never know when your number’s up!