Fans of playing the lottery have had an exciting run during the past few months as they have watched the grand prize in the Mega Millions lottery grow to more than $1 billion.
To play the game, you must choose five white ball numbers and one golden Mega ball number. You can choose your numbers for the game or have the lottery game pick your numbers via Quick Pick. Quick Pick is a lottery ticket number generated by a computer.
People choose numbers for all kinds of reasons, but is any one number luckier than another? According to statistics, no – the odds that any one number is chosen are the same as the odds that any other number will be chosen.
However, it seems that some numbers do show up more often in drawings than others.
Here’s a look, courtesy of Lottonumbers.com, at the numbers most drawn in the Mega Millions game.
First, the bad news
The numbers drawn for the Mega Millions jackpot are drawn at random. Any way you choose numbers for your ticket – be it by picking them yourself or by going with Quick Pick numbers -- you have the same ridiculously long odds of winning a single jackpot – 1 in 302.6 million.
All combinations have an equal probability of winning, meaning that if you use your grandparent’s birthdays for your ticket you are just as likely to win (or lose) the grand prize as you are if you had used the number combination of 1-2-3-4-5-6.
If you are thinking 302 million to 1 are really not such bad odds, consider this - you are more likely to be hit by lightning – the odds it will happen throughout your lifetime are 1 in 15,300.
You have one chance in 12,500 to hit a hole-in-one in golf, and one in 20 million of being canonized by the Catholic Church, making you a saint. Even the odds of being struck by lightning twice (1 in 11 million) are far better than the odds of matching the jackpot numbers.
Which numbers are drawn most often?
While numbers are drawn at random, some numbers seem to show up more than others in drawings.
So, which numbers seem “lucky?”
Here’s a list courtesy of the website lottonumbers.com.
Most common main numbers
Here are the 10 most common numbers drawn on the five white balls in the Mega Millions game for the past six years. (In Mega Millions you draw five white balls and a gold Mega Ball).
- 10: Drawn 55 times
- 14: Drawn 55 times
- 3: Drawn 54 times
- 17: Drawn 54 times
- 46: Drawn 54 times
- 31: Drawn 52 times
- 64: Drawn 52 times
- 8: Drawn 52 times
- 15: Drawn 52 times
- 38: Drawn 52 times
Most common Mega Millions numbers
Here are the 10 most common numbers for the gold Mega Ball in the last six years.
- 22: Drawn 34 times.
- 11: Drawn 31 times
- 9: Drawn 30 times
- 18: Drawn 28 times
- 25: Drawn 28 times
- 19: Drawn 28 times
- 4: Drawn 28 times
- 13: Drawn 28 times
- 24: Drawn 28 times
- 17: Drawn 27 times
Which number has been drawn the least number of times?
The number that has been drawn the least number of times since 2017 is the number 49. The number has only been drawn 28 times. The numbers 50 and 51 were both drawn only 31 times in six years.
Is there a pair of numbers seen more often?
The most common pair of numbers drawn as main numbers in Mega Millions is 10 and 17. Here are the rest.
- 10 and 17: Drawn nine times
- 4 and 64: Drawn eight times
- 17 and 27: Drawn eight times
- 8 and 10: Drawn seven times
- 6 and 46: Drawn seven times
- 37 and 46: Drawn seven times
