How Often Has That Number Been Drawn?

One of the most popular items on our Web site is something we offer just for fun, but people have a ball using it to try to predict the next numbers that will come up in our lotto games.

I’ll emphasize again that it’s just for fun, but enjoy it if it helps you pick the numbers you want to play in Powerball, Hot Lotto or Iowa’s $100,000 Cash Game! On our Web site, we have frequency charts that show the number of times a particular number has been selected in the drawings for our lotto games.

Do you like the number 5? It’s been drawn 122 times as a white ball and 26 times as the Powerball since 1997. Are you partial to the number 39? It’s come up 119 times as a white ball and 25 times as the Powerball during that time. The number 59, meanwhile, has been drawn just once as a white ball.

What’s all that indicate? Nothing, really. It’s just fun to track. Lottery games and their drawings are based solely on random outcomes. There truly is no way to predict which numbers will be drawn next in our games.

I’ve blogged here before about the fact that there’s only one “formula” that works when it comes to your chance of winning a lottery prize: You have to buy a ticket to have a chance to win!

So why is there such a variation in the number of times that certain numbers have been selected in lottery drawings? Part of it is just random statistics -- you really can’t predict which numbers will be drawn next. But a big part also is how long some of the numbers have been a part of the games.

In Powerball, for example, the numbers 56, 57, 58 and 59 were just added to the game in January. And at that same time, the numbers 40, 41 and 42 were removed from the pool of numbers for the Powerball. There have been other changes like that in our lotto games through the years that have had a big impact on the number of times some numbers have been selected – or were even eligible to be selected.

So, if you like to check out the frequency charts in our lotto games, go right ahead and have fun with them. Here is the frequency chart in Powerball, here is the chart for Hot Lotto, and here is the chart for Iowa’s $100,000 Cash Game. You never know when your favorite number might move up on the list!