"Strange" occurrences in SuperEnalotto

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to calculate the probability of consecutive number strings in random sequences, applied specifically to the Italian SuperEnalotto lottery, revealing that such strings occur roughly once every three draws.

Contribution

It introduces an explicit probability calculation method for consecutive number strings in large random sequences, with a detailed case study on SuperEnalotto.

Findings

Approximately one in three SuperEnalotto draws contains consecutive number strings.

The paper provides a mathematical framework for analyzing consecutive number occurrences.

Application to SuperEnalotto demonstrates the practical relevance of the probability model.

Abstract

In this paper a way is suggested for calculating the probability of consecutive number strings within a sequence of n numbers randomly drawn (without replacement) among the set of the first N consecutive numbers, with N>>n. An explicit derivation is carried out for the special case of SuperEnalotto, nowadays the most famous lottery in Italy, with N=90 and n=6. It turns out that, on average, one every three drawings presents one or more consecutive number strings inside.