The Maryland lottery has a game called Pick 4. You pick a 4 digit number, and if it matches the number drawn at the lottery office, you win. Simple game, simple odds: The chances of matching all 4 digits is 1 in 10,000, or 0.0001%.
The chances of winning twice are 1 in 100 million. There is one player who has won that game 79 times in one single year. The odds of that happening are 1 in 10^315. In other words, it is statistically improbable to the point where we can call it impossible.
It isn’t just that one player. In fact, there are 8 players who won a staggering 200 or more times EACH. Two of these players won the Multi-Match game a combined 439 times for $919,300 in winnings, six players won Racetrax 1,247 times for $1.7 million, and five won the Pick 4 game 505 times for $1.6 million. It isn’t the first time that someone has scammed the lottery, but at least Pennsylvania caught their scammers.
That’s how random probability works. If I flip a fair coin, there is a 50% chance that it will be heads on any single flip. However, if I flip a coin ten times, the chances of it never being tails drops to one in 1,000.
Here is my point, and the reason for the title of this post. If you believe that one person winning the grand prize in a lottery drawing 79 times in a single year is evidence of cheating, I want you to consider this next math problem:
Let’s say that ninety people out of every one hundred in a fictional Maryland voting district voted for Biden. If I randomly pull any single ballot from that district, there is a 90% chance that it will be for Biden and a 10% chance that it will be for Trump. If I pull two random ballots, there is a one percent chance that both will be Trump votes, and an 81 percent chance both will be Biden votes.
What if I pulled 7,000 consecutive ballots? What would be the odds of not finding a single Trump vote? 1 in 10^321. Remember that the chances of someone winning the Pick 4 game in Maryland 79 times in a year are one in 10^315.
So when the vote counters in 2020 claim that they found 28,000 consecutive votes for Biden in one district without a single Trump vote, it makes me scream “bullshit.”
With our next election being only 74 days away, we will soon find out just how much the Democrats are willing and able to cheat in the midterms. That will be a large hint of what will follow in 2024.
EDITED: Thanks to It’s Just Boris for catching a math error in my post. It has been fixed.
My apologies for the math errors. I was juiced on Nyquil when I typed this post.
9 Comments
Williams Botan · August 25, 2022 at 8:21 pm
Reminds me of Philadelphia LOL
McChuck · August 25, 2022 at 9:13 pm
Remember when a Cleveland precinct voted 120% for Obama, with zero votes for McCain? How about when Minnesota recounted and recounted and “found” bags of votes in closets and car trunks for months until the Democrat (Al Franken) won, then refused to allow any recounts or inspection of the ballots?
It's just Boris · August 25, 2022 at 9:31 pm
If 90% of the people voted for Biden, pulling two ballots will be both for Biden 81% of the time, not one percent. They would both be for Trump 1% of the time, and split one for each 18% of the time.
Divemedic · August 26, 2022 at 7:34 am
You are correct. I misstated. Sorry.
Anonymous · August 26, 2022 at 1:45 am
If is self evident Buyden should not be in the position to bankrupt the country
Anonymous · August 26, 2022 at 10:19 am
Your math for 1000 consecutive Biden votes is also flawed. That probability is (9/10)^1000, which works out approximately to 1 in 10^47. (The Earth has something like 10^50 atoms, for comparison.)
Divemedic · August 26, 2022 at 12:22 pm
Yeah. I caught that when I fixed the other math error. I fixed it already
Steve · August 26, 2022 at 10:38 am
If I understood your coin flip example, I believe it is off by an order of magnitude. 2^10=1,024, not 10,000.
Divemedic · August 26, 2022 at 12:17 pm
0.5^1000= 0.0009765
Comments are closed.