Abstract
We explore people's preferences for numbers in large proprietary data sets from two different lottery games. We find that choice is far from uniform, and exhibits some familiar and some new tendencies and biases. Players favor personally meaningful and situationally available numbers, and are attracted towards numbers in the center of the choice form. Frequent players avoid winning numbers from recent draws, whereas infrequent players chase these. Combinations of numbers are formed with an eye for aesthetics, and players tend to spread their numbers relatively evenly across the possible range.
Highlights
IntroductionTo the best of our knowledge, only Suetens and Tyran (2012) and Suetens, GalboJørgensen & Tyran (2015) use detailed individual-level data on lottery players and number choices
Vehicle license plates with the lucky number eight are auctioned at relatively high prices, and vehicle plates with the unlucky number four are auctioned at relatively low prices (Woo & Kwok, 1994; Woo, Horowitz, Luk & Lai, 2008; Chong & Du, 2008; Ng, Chong & Du, 2010)
We have documented a variety of empirical patterns in number choices in lottery games, using data sets that together comprise a total of approximately 33 million selected numbers
Summary
To the best of our knowledge, only Suetens and Tyran (2012) and Suetens, GalboJørgensen & Tyran (2015) use detailed individual-level data on lottery players and number choices All these studies focus on a subset of the behavioral regularities that we consider in the present paper. There is evidence that Dutch subjects most frequently cite red when asked to spontaneously produce a color; when asked to produce their favorite color, they show a preference for blue (Wiegersma & de Klerck, 1984; Wiegersma & van der Elst, 1988) In both games, odd numbers are more popular than even numbers With our individual-level Lotto data we can directly investigate whether players have a preference for playing with the numbers of their day, month, and year of birth.
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