Lotto Balls

Balls Or No Balls ?

Within the lottery forecasting industry there has been a great deal of attention paid to lottery balls. A tremendous amount of effort and study has been focused on the relationship between the microscopically differing physical attributes of the individual lottery balls and the frequency of their appearance rates. Many lottery prediction professionals adhere to a school of thought that a greater accuracy of lotto number forecasting can occur if a devotee of the game has a developed knowledge of a draw history database indicating which ball sets were used in which particular lottery draw. This belief that a relationship exists between the variations of ball weight, density, mass, colour and shapes manifests itself in theories which suggest that a minimum lottery draw history of at least 60 draws, after a new set of balls have been introduced, must be studied for predictive relationships to be effective. The supposedly new pattern or lottery signature, based upon the miniscule physical variances between the lotto balls will emerge after this time. The belief in this factor of lottery prediction is so significant that many lottery analysis software and program development designers actually place functions within their software applications to track and analyze the ball sets and dates on which those particular balls appeared for those particular draws.
This is not a new approach. Roulette players … similar types of beings to lotto players … have, for centuries, developed betting systems based upon the physical imperfections or bias of a particular roulette wheel and the number selection outcomes that this variation might produce. Due to the many shared attributes between the lotto enthusiast and the roulette fan, it should be no surprise that LT is a passionate roulette player and has developed a roulette system achieving above moderate success in all of the world’s major casinos from Istanbul to Mar de Plata … Monaco to the lights of Vegas … but that is a topic for a different web site and the system used for the roulette successes was not based upon the physical attributes of the roulette wheel or ball.

LT recalls participating in an internet lottery chat where this theory of ball significance was being extolled and the chat participants were instructed to always contact their local lottery corporations to find out when the lottery balls are changed. Everyone was concerned about balls and a subsequent discussion occurred when one chat participant type/text asked “what about MI balls?” I am sure that his unintentional injection of humour into the chat, regarding a query about the Michigan State Lottery, was appreciated by all.

Too much emphasis has been placed upon balls.

LT does not adhere to the school of thought that there is a correlation between individual ball differences and the effects upon their appearances in the lottery draws. Even if one assumed, incorrectly, that there was a correlation, would you want to wait 60 draws … possibly a year or more to compile a results history to begin the predictive analysis? Furthermore the lottery corporations are always changing the ball sets and machines to provide themselves with comfort in the belief that the draws are as randomly based as possible in a physical world.

The study of predicting upcoming lotto numbers is a very complex endeavour requiring an analysis of a multitude of numerical variables. In contrast to the belief about balls that is subscribed to by many lottery experts … LT recommends that you forget about balls in your approach to an understanding of effective lottery forecasting.

The following article from the Standards Council of Canada addresses the lottery ball analysis variable very well.

Lotto Ball Testing No Child’s Play

 On average, Canadians purchase 17 million Lotto 649 tickets before each draw. Some lottery enthusiasts even tune in to watch the draw on television, focusing the full force of their psychic abilities on each bouncing lotto ball. If the right numbers don’t come up, disappointed players can be forgiven for cursing the odds, the stars or an unlucky disposition. Just don’t blame the balls.

Interprovincial Lottery Corporation, which oversees Lotto 649 and Super 7, enlists the assistance of sophisticated measuring services to make certain that its machines and balls are beyond reproach. The balls, which are made in France,undergo a variety of tests to determine that they have similar physical characteristics. The goal, say lottery officials, is to ensure that every jackpot number is a truly random occurrence.

Before the balls can make someone’s financial dreams come true, they are sent to Quantum Inspection and Testing Limited, a Burlington, Ontario-based laboratory accredited by the Standards Council of Canada to perform calibration and non-destructive evaluation.

At Quantum, the balls are checked with a micrometer to determine that they are in fact 50 mm in diameter, as they should be. Next they are measured for resiliency – in other words, how well they bounce. This can be done using a measuring device known as a resiliometer, which drops a weight on the ball and measures how far away it is propelled, or by videotaping the balls as they are dropped and measuring the height of their bounce.

The balls are then submerged in water, and their volume determined by how much liquid is displaced. The test subjects are even exposed to an x-ray examination to ensure that there are no impurities or cavities within their solid rubber spheres.

Another laboratory, Ortech Corporation, measures the mass of the balls, and if all is in order, they are ready for the machine.

The policy of Interprovincial Lottery Corporation is that balls vary by no more than five per cent for each test. However, Quantum’s Derek Pilcher suggests that luck, more than science, is behind which ball decides to fall through the trap door of the machines. A variety of experiments have been done using balls of different sizes and weights and it hasn’t seemed to significantly affect the randomness of the results.

“An apple will come through the aperture as often as any of the balls,” says Mr. Pilcher.

Still, for Lotto junkies, it may be comforting to know that Quantum meets a variety of accreditation criteria. Equipment must undergo calibration traceable to the national measurement standards of the National Research Council of Canada. In addition, the laboratory must demonstrate the existence of appropriate human resources and equipment as well as quality and measurement systems.

So the next time your lucky numbers turn out to be not-so-lucky – don’t blame the balls, blame the numbers.

from CONSENSUS – Canada’s News Magazine of Standardization
Volume 23, Number 4 June/July/August 1996

All the Best of Lotto Luck
Lotto Tutor