Lottery tips...from Planet Science

To get the best value from your lottery ticket, there are two Really Important Things To Know. The first is that any set of numbers is as likely to win as any other. No system will make you more likely to win. All you can do is try to share your jackpot (if it even happens) with as few other people as possible.
To do this, you need to know the second Really Important Thing: although the lottery machine is good at picking random numbers, people aren’t. This is where you can get an edge.
For example, most of us tend to spread our numbers too evenly between 1 and 49 – so you should choose numbers that are bunched together. And people tend to choose numbers near the middle of the ticket, so you should choose yours from near the edges.
But here’s the problem: if everyone starts following these guidelines, they’ll all be picking numbers like yours, and you’ll end up sharing the jackpot again! The system only works if very few people use it.
Here’s a real example. Most people won’t choose the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – they don’t seem “random” enough. A tiny percentage of lottery players, who understand probability, try to get an advantage by choosing this set of numbers. The trouble is that this tiny percentage is actually quite a lot of folk – if you do win with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, you’ll be sharing your jackpot with several thousand people!