#Washington state lotto winning numbers software

#Washington state lotto winning numbers software

Tipton - in a confession following his 2017 lottery fraud conviction - told investigators that in 2006 he had warned his employer that computer software he had written to randomly draw numbers had an alarming flaw: The draws weren't truly random. The Register launched an eight-month investigation into lottery draws with identical numbers after the conviction and sentencing last year of Eddie Tipton, a former Multi-State Lottery Association security worker in Urbandale who admitted masterminding the largest lottery fraud in U.S. 'My conclusion is that it is highly unlikely that the chosen numbers in either of these lotteries are truly random,' Molzon said. Like Austin, Molzon - in reviewing sets of winning strings of lottery numbers called multiple times in Wisconsin and West Virginia over a multiyear period - concluded that outliers exist in some of the Wisconsin drawings identified in the Register’s investigation. However, it is simple to compute probabilities that a given number of 'doubles' (identical numbers) will appear over a fixed time period as a way to assess whether a problem may exist, he said. It’s impossible to directly test whether lottery computer-generated numbers are truly random without gaining access to the systems, Molzon said. Robert Molzon, a retired math professor at the University of Kentucky, concurred.

'Convention would say that the Wisconsin Lottery results are statistically significant and even close to being highly significant,' Austin said. In eight instances, the same winning numbers were generated in consecutive drawings in the same games in Arizona, Missouri, Oregon and Colorado, the Register found.Īustin, the Grand Valley State math professor, reviewed some of the same-number draws the Register identified as possible anomalies in Wisconsin and West Virginia.Īustin - who ran more than 10,000 simulations as part of his review - determined that although the duplicate drawings in West Virginia seemed consistent with statistical odds, several examples in Wisconsin appeared to be outliers 'worthy of investigation.' (The Register reviewed only those lottery games that select at least five numbers, because those games generally have a smaller probability of having the same numbers drawn twice.) Using data of winning drawings in 37 states collected by the website LotteryPost, the Register identified more than 100 drawings over the past 25 years where the same game generated identical winning numbers within 365 days of each other. Professors review drawings, and find outliers Austin has researched and written about the difficulties associated with creating number generators.Īlready, several states, including Iowa, Arizona, Connecticut and South Carolina, have identified problems with random number-generated lotteries, and some have ended games because of the problems.

“It suggests that there are outliers, and it suggests it's worthy of investigation,” said math professor David Austin, of Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Math experts who have researched lottery drawings told the Register it's difficult to truly know whether the identical draws indicate a serious problem without an in-depth inspection of the lottery software, but they say the draws deserve a closer look. 'They’re shielding their eyes from the dishonesty of these games.'

'Lottery directors and state legislators are running these rigged games with blinders on,' said Les Bernal, director of Stop Predatory Gambling, based in Washington, D.C. The problems are aggravated by the lack of national oversight, those critics contend. But critics of random-number drawings contend that the identical draws, coupled with records identifying problems in several states with 'random number' computer generators, demonstrate that the fairness and integrity of the nation’s $80.5 billion annual lottery system are compromised.