'Everything can be explained'
National lottery drawings happen every day in the Philippines, and the results are broadcast online and through television and radio stations, often with breaks for infomercials. Before each drawing, the broadcast shows an inspection of the automated lottery machines and the balls that are used to pick the winning numbers.
The 433 winners of the Grand Lotto drawing on October 1 are each expected to receive at least 545,000 Philippine pesos, or about NZ$16,200, before taxes — more than double the average annual per-capita income in the Philippines. The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which organises the lottery, has not revealed the names of the winners.
Melquiades Robles, the general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, told reporters on Sunday that the popularity of the number nine may have had something to do with the outcome. "So far, the event last night is just one of the ordinary events, except we have a lot of winners," he added. "Everything can be explained. We do not see anything wrong."
A day later, Guido David, a mathematics professor at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, uploaded an analysis of the lottery's results to Twitter that echoed the multiples-of-nine theory. As for the odds of that specific outcome? "The answer is that it is the same as any other particular outcome," he wrote.
There's always a chance
Such explanations did not satisfy critics, some of whom have spent years placing bets at accredited lotto outlets in markets, malls and alleys across the Philippines. A few noted that some officials from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which sold nearly US$443m in tickets in the first half of this year, have been convicted of bribery and other charges over the past decade, including one case in which they pocketed prize money.
One long-time bettor, Elizalde Dumile, 49, said on Wednesday that the October 1 lottery result smarted a little: he had played some of the same numbers before and only won about 500 Philippine pesos each time. The size of the winner pool also struck him as suspiciously large.
"Four hundred thirty-three people got all six numbers correct all at the same time?" asked Dumile, a domestic worker in Cotabato City in southern Philippines. "There's something fishy about that." Members of the Philippine Congress agreed. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate said this week that they planned to investigate the contentious draw.
One of those legislators, Aquilino Pimentel III, the minority leader of the Senate, told The Times in a text message on Wednesday that while the result was "not impossible", it seemed "highly improbable".
The House minority leader, Marcelino Libanan, said an investigation was justified, partly because news of the 433 winners had triggered so much speculation — on social media and in news media reports — about possible fraud.
"We also have to safeguard the hopes and dreams of millions of Filipinos that patronise the lotto draws every day," he said on Tuesday. But mathematicians said that they saw no evidence of fraud.
Czarinne Antoinette Antonio, a statistician at the University of the Philippines, said that she believed her colleague Guido David's analysis of the October 1 lottery draw was correct. She added that researchers could analyse the result further by looking more closely at specific details, including the number of people who bought tickets.
Chua, the statistician in Singapore, said the criticism was an example of humans misunderstanding the nature of randomness.
"Some time ago, there was news about a person that struck the jackpot more than once in his lifetime," he said. "Would that be possible? Yes. Are the chances very low? Yes. Is it going to happen to someone? Yes."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Camille Elemia and Mike Ives
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
