Expert: Sherman D. - 4/26/2009

Question
Hi i am very interested in how you managed to work out the lottery euro millions chances, can you please explain it in more details e.g why you times those certain numbers and how you worked it out from sratch.

ive been trying to do this for a while now, but i think my method is very long, i worked out te luck stars in  diffrent way and got the same result as you, i just wanted to know how you work out the other numbers, and why you work it out like you have shown?

Answer
can you repeat the previous question so that i know which question your talking about that i answered.

if your talking about a certain amount of numbers, then all you have to do is google

combination formula.

like if you have 100 numbers, but your only allowed to use 6 numbers, then

nCr becomes 100C6

as in

nCr = (n!)/(r!(n - r)!)

by the way that ! stands for factorials, as in 5! means 5*4*3*2*1

so

100C6 = (100!)/(6!(100 - 6)!)
100C6 = 1192052400

which means there is a 1 in 1192052400 chance of you getting those exact numbers in any order.

more info found at http://www.mathsisfun.com/combinatorics/combinations-permutations.html

and without knowing what the exact question was, i won't be able to remember what it was, since i don't really recall ever doing a question like that for a long time.