Editorials
Lady Luck is in the maths
By h.b. - Dec 7, 2007 - 12:17 AM
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EDITORIAL COMMENT
One of the main events of the Spanish Christmas is El Gordo – the fat one – the Christmas lottery which is drawn on December 22. The children from the San Idefonso college will sing the numbers, as they do each year, and for a few hours the country will come to a partial halt as people watch the television or listen to the radio as the numbers are called.
They say there are lies, damn lies and statistics and if you are thinking of buying a decimo for 20 € this year, and remember if you don’t buy a ticket you can’t win, but here are some of the mathematical facts for this year’s draw.
You have a 1 in 10 chance of getting your stake money back, and a 1 in 20 chance of making a profit, as only 13,334 numbers of the 85,000 inside the huge golden bombo will be numbers winning some sort of prize.
This year sees 185 series with 85,000 tickets in each series and that means that 13,334 numbers of each series will get some winnings returned, even if it is only the stake money.
The Spanish will spend 3.245 billion € on tickets this year, of which 2.201 billion € will be returned as prize money.
But truth be told very few people have done the math. El Gordo is part of the Spanish Christmas traditions, as much part of the festivities as the cava or the langostinos. It was back in the reign of Carlos III in 1763 when the first Spanish lottery took place. In those days players had to choose five numbers from a choice of 90.
Back to the current day, and the mathematicians do give one tip, but don’t ask me to explain it… Apparently it is better to buy ten decimos of different numbers than a single whole ticket.
¡Buena suerte!
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