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Derin from Woodhouse College gave a clear
presentation of his reasoning:
At first draw, there are 6 balls in the bag, any one of your 3
numbers needs to be picked, this gives you a $\frac{3}{6}$ chance
(or $\frac{1}{2}$).
For your second ball to be chosen, there are now five balls in the
bag and there are two possible balls which if picked would lead to
a win, therefore, your chance for the second ball is $\frac{2}{5}$.
For the last ball, there are now four balls left in the bag, only
one of which has your number painted on it, therefore, the chance
of your ball being picked is $\frac{1}{4}$.
In order for all three of your balls to be picked sequentially, you
must multiply the probabilities of each being chosen on their own,
i.e:$\frac{3}{6}\times\frac{2}{5}\times\frac{1}{4}= \frac{1}{20}$
therefore you have a one-in-twenty (or 0.05) chance of
winning.
Ayden from Melbourn Village College
calculated the solution to the rest of the problem. He also noticed
that the chances of picking two balls out of six and four balls out
of six is the same.
If you had a 2 out of 6 ball lottery it would increase your chances
of winning, which is $\frac{1}{15}$ as opposed to
$\frac{1}{20}$.
Drawing 4 balls instead of 2 will keep the chance of winning the
same, $\frac{1}{15}$.
Having a 1 ball lottery will dramatically increase your chance of
winning, which is $\frac{1}{6}$.
Having a 5 ball lottery will give you the same chance of winning,
$\frac{1}{6}$.
To have the least possibility of winning a10 ball lottery, you
would need to pick 5 balls.
The probability of winning the national lottery
$\frac{1}{13983816}$ this is often rounded to
$\frac{1}{14000000}$.
Phil from Wilson's School provided more
explanations and some shrewd insights on how to solve the last
parts of the problem
If the Mathsland lottery is using a ten-ball lottery and wants to
make the least chance of winning as possible, then you must need to
pick 5 balls correctly to win. This is because if you look at the
six-ball lottery the chance of winning was its lowest when three
balls were needed to be picked correctly. This is half of three and
either side of 3 balls, 2 and 4, the chance of winning went back
up.
For example, when five out of ten must be picked, the chance of
winning is
$\frac{1}{2}\times\frac{4}{9}\times\frac{3}{8}\times\frac{2}{7}\times\frac{1}{6}=
\frac{24}{6048}=\frac{1}{252}$, which is smaller than four balls
($\frac{2}{5}\times\frac{1}{3}\times\frac{1}{4}\times\frac{1}{7}=\frac{1}{210}$)
and six balls, therefore if the Mathsland lottery is organising a
ten-ball lottery 5 balls should be predicted as this results in the
lowest winning chances.
The chances of winning the UK National lottery is
$\frac{6}{49}\times\frac{5}{48}\times\frac{4}{47}\times\frac{3}{46}\times\frac{2}{45}\times\frac{1}{44}=\frac{1}{13,983,816}$
or approximately 1 in 14 million.
However you can also win money for guessing 3, 4 or 5 numbers and
the chances are:
3 numbers: 1/56.7
4 numbers: 1/1032.4
5 numbers: 1/55,491.3 recurring.
George, also from Wilson's School, compared
the result obtained with the simulator to the theoretical
result. Great work! Click here to see the
file.
It is worth pointing out that picking 2
balls out of 6 balls is essentially the same as picking 4 balls out
of 6 balls, since by picking 2 balls and dumping 4 balls, you are
also choosing 4 balls to dump and keeping 2 balls. The two
processes are equivalent. The same goes for picking 1 out of 6 and
picking 5 out of 6, etc.
Well done to everyone!