Automate Thai state lottery system: Chulalongkorn University

[jackr]

People should not be handling the numbers, period, because as soon as you introduce the human equation--not singling out our perfect friends here--it opens it all up to the big cheat. It should be just one machine (on the night) doing everything, and preferably one made outside these lands (and China).

As someone else pointed out, that that number came up twice in relatively close succession don't mean squat; it needs time to even out. It might not come up again for another 834, 1251, 1668, and so on, years.

Not that I do the Thai one anyway... it's tight enough getting away with your taters in tact accidentally slipping 100 baht off of em, imagine trying to walk away with 100M!

[TechnikaIII]

The REAL news, and something worthy of note, will be when something, anything "National" does NOT show signs of rigging.

[OzMick]

What I always wondered about the Thai lottery , is why the payout is so tiny...

Ticket prices are 100 thb (or is it 110 now?) , understand that sellers buy for less and mark up, but even if they are buying at half the selling ...

50 THB would be about USD 1.67... While lottery tickets in US are only 1 USD

There are aprox 70 mil people in Thailand lottery system and total US population is aprox 300 mil... But US lottery is run by states.

So if we look at New York lottery for comparison... New York has aprox 20 mil people (less than a third of the population of Thailand)

Lets assume a similar % of population play the lottery... It should mean that the total ticket sales should be more than triple the total sales of the New York lottery... Or even more if you consider that the per ticket price is much higher in Thailand.

Now lets compare the payout for winners...

Current payout for Thai Lottery... 4mil thb or aprox 130,000

Payout for the Next New York Lottery ... 8.3 mil USD or 249 mil THB...

So where us all the money for the Thai lottery going? As they are only giving a very very tiny percentage to winners

Sent from my iPhone using ThaiVisa app

Your result is based on a mishmash of false assumptions and illogical conclusions

The conclusions are logical using the figures he has given here.

If the assumptions are false the conclusion would be different.

Can you supply us with the correct assumptions. Numbers do not lie give us the real numbers so we can see for are selves the validity of the false assumptions claim.

<deleted>? Why would I have the figures to support somebody else's claims?

Any comparison should be made on ticket sales and price. Population is irrelevant as tickets may be sold on-line and to non-residents, and relative incomes may allow NYers to buy many more tickets per head. The total ticket sales multiplied by the ticket price will give you the organiser's income, the ratio of income to TOTAL payout will then give you an indication of the fairness of the lottery, as lotteries may vary in payout distribution (large and small prizes).

But as the whole concept is selling a dream to mugs and raising income for the organisers after their costs, don't expect the result ever to be ticket-buyer friendly.

[HaleySabai]

How does Thai national lottery work?

.....how does Thailand work?...... answer one and you have answered the other.

[vincentc]

Note to self: Do not send my kid to the statistics class in Chulalongkorn University. Or perhaps not to Chulalongkorn at all.

[Guest]

Well, guess I am a fool, because I only spend about 3,000 baht a month on tickets - my 2,800,000 win a year ago is resting comfortably in my bank account..........accordingly to the esteemed Pprofessor statistically speaking.........I never should have won in the first place. Now what is the last 2 numbers of Yinglucks Van???

It's perfectly normal that you won on the lottery. Then again, if you keep on playing long enough, it's likely that you'll loose all the money you have won.

There is no such thing that casino/lottery organizer looses money on a long run.

[Credo]

My guess is that the professors data is correct. It might not be reported exactly correctly, but I would think he knows what he's doing and that he's had some peer review before this hit the press.

[madmitch]

What I always wondered about the Thai lottery , is why the payout is so tiny...

Ticket prices are 100 thb (or is it 110 now?) , understand that sellers buy for less and mark up, but even if they are buying at half the selling ...

50 THB would be about USD 1.67... While lottery tickets in US are only 1 USD

There are aprox 70 mil people in Thailand lottery system and total US population is aprox 300 mil... But US lottery is run by states.

So if we look at New York lottery for comparison... New York has aprox 20 mil people (less than a third of the population of Thailand)

Lets assume a similar % of population play the lottery... It should mean that the total ticket sales should be more than triple the total sales of the New York lottery... Or even more if you consider that the per ticket price is much higher in Thailand.

Now lets compare the payout for winners...

Current payout for Thai Lottery... 4mil thb or aprox 130,000

Payout for the Next New York Lottery ... 8.3 mil USD or 249 mil THB...

So where us all the money for the Thai lottery going? As they are only giving a very very tiny percentage to winners

Sent from my iPhone using ThaiVisa app

A couple of reasons: One is the amount paid out on 2 and 3 digits. Also there are several tickets with the same numbers so they pay out more than one jackpot.

One day they may change to the type of system most Western state lotteries seem to use but that would alienate the poor sales people as sales would be taken over by 7-Eleven etc.

[Beats56]

My statistics teacher always told me that with draws like this each chance is independent therefore it is possible to have two or even three identical results in a row. The thing is it averages out over a very long period. Maybe Thai statisticas is different.

That's true. For this academic to conclude that it is suspicious for the number 66 to be drawn out twice in a decade is ridiculous.

Statistics merely show that the probability of such events happening is X, but since the whole basis of a state lottery is random chance, there is no reason why the number 66 cannot appear in three, four or even five consecutive lotteries. And, there is no proof that the law of statistics will average out, even over a very long period.

I continue to play in a UK Lottery syndicate (with the help of family back home) and we have seen the same three numbers coming up on numerous occasions over the years. Statistically, that's impossible, but the lottery vendor certainly has no problems paying the GBP 10.00 on each occasion, essentially because these numbers defied the 'law of statistics' and followed the 'law of chance'...! How long would it take for that to average out...? Probably a million years or so?!

BTW, why would anyone want to pay such a high stake for such low wins in the Thai state lottery....?

You can sign up for one of the many Canadian Lotteries on line. Pick your number you don't have to worry about if you missed playing. That said they have quick pick when you go to the store and it gives you your number but statistical speaking if you play a the same number your chances at winning are better if you stay with the same numbers all the time. In fact on their site you can look at the all the numbers that get drawn and the frequency they come up. it is called 649 ..meaning 6 numbers to win the big one with 49 balls. Still it is like 13 million to 1 to win.

But is you don't play then you wont win...that is the mindset!

[steinghan]

Statistically speaking, how many of you did understood this sentence "For instance, he said, having the same last two digits of 66 appear as the winning number twice in a decade is impossible statistically speaking as it can only occur once in 417 years on average." ...

To me it looks mostly as if someone - be it the professor or the newspaper - have had a problem with decimal points - at least if numbers are drawn as seems to be the case according to the photo. I.e. each digit is drawn from a bowl where all 10 numbers are present. Then the statistic probability for the last digit being a 6 is 1:10 and same goes for 6 as being drawn for the second last digit or any other position for that matter. Thus, the statistic probability for the two last digits being 66 is 1:100 - that is: having 66 as the last two digits in the winning number should statistically occur once every hundredth drawing - (assuming all digits are truly randomly drawn).

Drawings every 14 days makes about 26 draws per year. I haven't checked my calculator, but if this doesn't yield exactly 4.17 year for 100 draws, it comes pretty close.

There recently have been other news about somewhat more serious matters where the decimal points also weren't quite right. I come from a country where we use periods for thousand seperators and commas for decimal points and I think some other European countries do the same. Perhaps the university is using equipment where some items go by the American system and others go by the opposite system.

Edited June 15, 2013 by steinghan

[OzMick]

A couple of reasons: One is the amount paid out on 2 and 3 digits. Also there are several tickets with the same numbers so they pay out more than one jackpot.

One day they may change to the type of system most Western state lotteries seem to use but that would alienate the poor sales people as sales would be taken over by 7-Eleven etc.

AFAIK the 2 and 3 digit numbers are operated illegally, and there was a big legal battle when Thaksin tried to introduce it into the standard lottery system.

[KRS1]

Always wondered how they would rig the lottery with those see through clear plastic machines.

Never occurred to me that they could fool people in the wide open.

Simply manufacture a lottery ball a couple millimeters too large to fit the clear plastic tube. While one ball fits perfectly.

Very clever

[ginjag]

What I always wondered about the Thai lottery , is why the payout is so tiny...

Ticket prices are 100 thb (or is it 110 now?) , understand that sellers buy for less and mark up, but even if they are buying at half the selling ...

50 THB would be about USD 1.67... While lottery tickets in US are only 1 USD

There are aprox 70 mil people in Thailand lottery system and total US population is aprox 300 mil... But US lottery is run by states.

So if we look at New York lottery for comparison... New York has aprox 20 mil people (less than a third of the population of Thailand)

Lets assume a similar % of population play the lottery... It should mean that the total ticket sales should be more than triple the total sales of the New York lottery... Or even more if you consider that the per ticket price is much higher in Thailand.

Now lets compare the payout for winners...

Current payout for Thai Lottery... 4mil thb or aprox 130,000

Payout for the Next New York Lottery ... 8.3 mil USD or 249 mil THB...

So where us all the money for the Thai lottery going? As they are only giving a very very tiny percentage to winners

Sent from my iPhone using ThaiVisa app

Your result is based on a mishmash of false assumptions and illogical conclusions

The conclusions are logical using the figures he has given here.

If the assumptions are false the conclusion would be different.

Can you supply us with the correct assumptions. Numbers do not lie give us the real numbers so we can see for are selves the validity of the false assumptions claim.

I tried to compare Thai lottery to UK lottery -Difficult BUT here their seems to be an awful lot of money collected that is not forwarded into winners tickets.

Secondly the scam of the price of a ticket, varies, no wonder their are hosts of sellers--sell a hundred tickets and you have at least a thousand bht, These sellers are among the so called employed---no wonder the unemployment figures are so low, tip of the iceberg.

[atyclb]

So this is the result of a three decade long study at one of Thailand's top universities.

Enough said.

In lieu of cutting edge research like this they are puzzled why their universities have dropped in Asean rankings.

[bigbamboo]

So this is the result of a three decade long study at one of Thailand's top universities.

Enough said.

Enough said? By whom? Your post is denigrating false innuendo coming from and unreliable knowledge source- yourself.

I guess some people are easily pleased ! Edited June 15, 2013 by bigbamboo

[Thai at Heart]

I can't believe a university statistician bothered to take 30 years to claim it could be fixed.

[rbrooks]

So this is the result of a three decade long study at one of Thailand's top universities.

Enough said

Sounds like they have nothing better to do. Amazing Thailand

[sawadeeken]

Have you considered where you are (or at least the country refered to)? TIT(This Is Thailand) and I can believe that anything controlled (or even 'overseen') by this government is highly possible.........

[khaowong1]

I read a couple of years ago about the Italian state lotto being rigged in a quite clever way.

The draw was always broadcasted on TV and the were using ping-pong balls with numbers painted on them, handpicked by a blindfolded assistant.

The thing they did was to put the six winning numbers-to-be in the fridge before the draw, and the assistant, being in on the scam, simply picked the cold ones! The whole scam was revealed when someone found an eggbox with six ping-pong balls in the fridge backstage just before the show started..

Also, our beloved Mr Stay-In-Dubai was in Uganda a couple of years ago to set up a state lottery there. Propably entirely transparent and corruption-free, one would assume. So, he seems to have some experience in the field, and I guess the Ugandan farmers are better off now, when they have a chance to be blessed by his luck instead of investing their money in boring luck-free stuff like tractors, crops. education or toilets...

There's an article here on Thai Visa about the Ugandan lottery affairs:

Will Thaksin Gain From State Visit By Uganda's President Museveni?

The old ice cold ping pong balls is an old scam.. I read somewhere it probably started with the now long gone gypsy fortune tellers and circus's.. I wonder if this is what the Thai lottery people use? just saying, not accusing..

[retell]

I read a couple of years ago about the Italian state lotto being rigged in a quite clever way.

The draw was always broadcasted on TV and the were using ping-pong balls with numbers painted on them, handpicked by a blindfolded assistant.

The thing they did was to put the six winning numbers-to-be in the fridge before the draw, and the assistant, being in on the scam, simply picked the cold ones! The whole scam was revealed when someone found an eggbox with six ping-pong balls in the fridge backstage just before the show started..

Also, our beloved Mr Stay-In-Dubai was in Uganda a couple of years ago to set up a state lottery there. Propably entirely transparent and corruption-free, one would assume. So, he seems to have some experience in the field, and I guess the Ugandan farmers are better off now, when they have a chance to be blessed by his luck instead of investing their money in boring luck-free stuff like tractors, crops. education or toilets...

There's an article here on Thai Visa about the Ugandan lottery affairs:

Will Thaksin Gain From State Visit By Uganda's President Museveni?

The old ice cold ping pong balls is an old scam.. I read somewhere it probably started with the now long gone gypsy fortune tellers and circus's.. I wonder if this is what the Thai lottery people use? just saying, not accusing..

and how can they predict the sequence of those cold balls beeing drawn . i say lets go digital so nobody has a clue except the organiser and computer programmer

Edited June 15, 2013 by retell

[tigergrl]

it shows signs of rigging? nooo!!

[pistachios]

I pity the students of this "statistician". He hasn't understood anything about randomness. That's pretty frightening.

Anyway I wonder what is the R.O.I. of this lottery. I know that it's below 50% for euromillion, i'm guessing much less since the payouts are so tiny.

[retell]

it shows signs of rigging? nooo!!

easily enough to record it a year before

or to morph the numbers digitally so a 1 can be a 8

[Cuban]

Can anyone offer a site in English that explains the draw system.

I've looked at sites that offer the results and number tips etc.

My wife has failed a few times to offer an explanation although I did really improve my understanding of Thai spoken numbers by overhearing conversations twice a month. (Usually during ridiculously early morning phone calls after someone had a dream.)

[TechnikaIII]

What pile of crap is this? I do not know for sure how the lottery system works in thailand but if the same number of unique digits are pulled randomly from a ballot each time then each draw has the exact same statistical probabilities.

You could drawing 66 ten times in a row and there will be nothing strange about it.

Using a dice as an example (six faces), drawing 10 times an ace (number 1) throwing 10 times the same dice is as probable as any other series of number.

If this professor is arguing such basic probability theory then I worry for his students.

I'd love to ask this guy about his take on the Monty Hall problem... Lol

No wonder Thailand is one of the only country in the world that has not won a Nobel Price ! I wonder if someone has even been nominated ever.

"No wonder Thailand is one of the only country in the world that has not won a Nobel Prize ! I wonder if someone has even been nominated ever."

Yes there was one guy a few years back. He was out standing in his field. It was later explained to the person who nominated him that: "No, ... sorry sir. Standing out in his field is not the same as being "oustanding his field".

Edited June 16, 2013 by Scott

[bigbamboo]

I've always thought the lottery was a kind of therapy for Thais, giving them a flash of hope for a better future without having to work for it.... a bit like voting PTP I guess !

But I've tried to explain to my wife that it's basically a bum deal. Unlike in the UK where 50 per cent of the pot is paid out here it is a fraction of that. I've told her to imagine ten friends sitting down, betting 100 baht each and the winner gets 100 baht plus their stake back. The remaining 800 baht just disappears. And that's probably being optimistic.

But she still does it!

[Guest]

I've always thought the lottery was a kind of therapy for Thais, giving them a flash of hope for a better future without having to work for it.... a bit like voting PTP I guess !

But I've tried to explain to my wife that it's basically a bum deal. Unlike in the UK where 50 per cent of the pot is paid out here it is a fraction of that. I've told her to imagine ten friends sitting down, betting 100 baht each and the winner gets 100 baht plus their stake back. The remaining 800 baht just disappears. And that's probably being optimistic.

But she still does it!

Let's not forget the entertaining value here.

I knew that the odds are against me when I played national lottery on my own country. On online system I put every week the 0.5 to 1 euro amount (it was done automatically) to play the lottery. There was chance to win

The money amount was not important for me, but of course if I had won, I would have been an millionaire.

My point of view is that it's pretty ok to play lottery, even if it's against the odds. However it's not ok to put larger amounts to the game. That simply has no meaning anymore.

In Thailand one lottery ticket is good as it gives entertainment for an moment. Two or any other amount is simply being stupid.

[LuckyLew]

sure .. automate the lotto system ...............

Then what do you do with all the current ticket sellers that will then have no jobs?

[johna]

Automating the lottery will not solve the problem, if anything it will make fraud easier, what's needed is transparency and simplification. I would very much like to know how much money is collected from ticket sales, how much is paid out ect, over the years I have several times read of 2 lottery winners with the same ticket number claiming the prize, but the only way that can happen is if a second illegal batch of tickets are in circulation.

Wrong. There are only 999,999 possible numeric combinations and they sell several million tickets per draw, therefore there is duplication.

Vendors often sell two tickets to the same person with exactly the same number.

No, stories I read said authorities were investigating, so there should not have been 2 tickets with the same number, I don't buy lottery tickets so can not be sure but I think you can buy half a ticket, each half having the same number.

[thelegend]

IT is a sad fact of life that most things are not as they seem or should be. That said , we all know the chance of winning even in a fair lottery are remote , But it does provide a value to those who play it ....... for a few baht they can buy a few days of HOPE , a rare commodity in the lives of so many . In moderation enjoy if it is your thing .