There’s odd math surrounding the white balls from the Powerball drawing Wednesday, April 29 where 91 tickets won at least $1 million, including two that won the jackpot.
The winning numbers were 3, 19, 35, 51, 67 and Powerball 15. The multiplier was 2x.
The white balls – 3, 19, 35, 51 and 67 – in numerical order all increase by 16. For example 3 plus 16 is 19. If you add 19 and 16, it’s 35 and so on.
Twenty-seven tickets matched the five white balls and had the Power Play option to win $2 million each.
Sixty-two tickets matched the five white balls to win $1 million each. Indiana and New Jersey each had fourteen tickets that matched the five white balls to win $1 million.
A combined 89 tickets matched the white balls, but not the Powerball.
“In my opinion, the 89-winner event almost certainly isn’t a statistical fluke at all,” said Fernando Charro, associate professor of mathematics at Wayne State University. “The numbers 3, 19, 35, 51, 67 are in arithmetic sequence, each number increases by exactly 16. Players love patterns like this, I’m sure there are thousands of such patterns and this one just happened to win and that’s why it became relevant.”
He also surmised the numbers may line up in the same column on many states’ Powerball bet slips, making them incredibly easy to select with a single vertical mark.
Images of New Jersey’s Powerball bet slips show this exact case.
A Reddit user also posted images of Indiana and Kansas bet slips, showing how the numbers align.
Also abnormal, a news release announcing where jackpot-winning tickets were sold is usually posted to the Powerball website the morning after a drawing. However, a news release related to the Wednesday drawing winners had not been posted as of 2:45 p.m. Thursday, April 30.
Messages to the Multi-State Lottery Association, which facilitates Powerball, were not immediately returned.
The estimated jackpot for the Wednesday, April 29 drawing was $143.4 million ($65.2 million cash prize).
The jackpot was won by two tickets sold in Indiana and Kansas.
Powerball also had a lot of high-tier winners in the Saturday, Sept. 6 drawing when two tickets won the jackpot, two won $2 million and 18 won $1 million.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: There’s a pattern in winning Powerball numbers from 91-winner drawing
Reporting by Tanya Wildt and Brian Manzullo, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
