• DOI:10.2139/ssrn.2657776
• Corpus ID: 54701125

Number Preferences in Lotteries

@article{Wang2016NumberPI,
  title={Number Preferences in Lotteries},
  author={Tong V. Wang and Rogier Jan Dave Potter van Loon and Martijn J. van den Assem and Dennie van Dolder},
  journal={Political Behavior: Cognition},
  year={2016}
}

• Tong V. Wang, Rogier Jan Dave Potter van Loon, +1 author Dennie van Dolder
• Published 1 May 2016
• Economics
• Political Behavior: Cognition

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.