Patterns in manually selected numbers in the Israeli lottery

Abstract We investigate the manual selection of numbers by lottery participants, with a database consisting over 800 million selections from 118 consecutive draws national in Israel. Our findings replicate results prior research and introduce novel discoveries. (1) Preference for, avoidance of, specific 1 through 37 are consistent throughout all drawings. Strong, but differing preferences observed “power” number ranging to 7. (2) The guesses entered per draw correlates size prize, each additional prize money generating 33,000 guesses. (3) Number strongly influenced their location on form. Numbers first four horizontal rows consistently most popular, while fourth unpopular. (4) As increases, popularly chosen tend become slightly less unpopular