Page 41 - Unlikely Stories 1

Your Lucky Numbers

“But that ignorance, unreason and childish faith has another
aspect, one which spells trouble for the lottery as an ongoing
mechanism for raising revenue and creates personal danger for the
people running it. I am referring to a false notion of patterns and
randomization. That is, as long as the six numbers drawn conform to
the public’s idea of a random sequence, they are satisfied with that
appearance as a reflection of reality. And the typical draw looks like 8,
17, 23, 28, 30, 44. No pattern there, right? But the same probability,
one out of fourteen million, exists for every sequence of six numbers
within the range of one through forty-nine. That means it is just as
likely for the sequence 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 to come up as any other.
Now, that obviously has a recognizable pattern, and would get people
aroused and suspicious; they would be less unhappy if no one held
that ticket, or if turned out that it had been generated randomly by a
sales machine which could be taken apart and proven honest.
Nevertheless, a calculable number of these coincidental patterns can
be identified, based on research done years ago on human
perception. That number is less than five hundred, representing
about one chance in 300,000 that a disturbing pattern would result
from a perfectly random draw. Over the years, our state lottery has
made about twelve hundred draws, and every one of them has had
the look of randomness—no easily perceived pattern. Every one, that
is, until tonight.”
“Oh,” said Ty. “And that is why we are running away like
bank robbers after a heist?”
“I’m afraid so. Most of my co-workers do not share my
concern, calling it paranoid. They were complacent about the
possibility of a pattern occurring in their lifetime, or thought the
public would simply be dumbfounded but ultimately mollified, or,
failing that, that they would be protected from the howling mobs. I
am not so convinced. Vigilantes shoot first and ask questions later,
and I had no reason to think the people we work for wouldn’t throw
us to the wolves. I see it as the peasants, armed with pitchforks and
shovels, storming Baron Frankenstein’s castle. So I made a
contingency plan: this is it. We are going to a cabin I bought years

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