On Channel 4 last night Derren Brown ‘revealed’ the secrets to how he picked on Live TV the 6 winning lottery numbers for Wednesday’s draw. But before you all go rushing out to get 24 friends round your house, put them in some sort of trance and have them free writing numbers let me tell you (if you didn’t already know), entertaining though the show was, I can categorically state that that was not how he did it!
If you still think it was how he did it, consider this - He claimed that 24 people wrote down 6 numbers and he took the mean average of these figures to come up with his lottery balls. How then did he manage to successfully pick Number 2? This would have meant that 24 people managed to all write down a very low number in exactly the same column. It would have only taken two people out of the 24 to have written a number over 20, or 5 people to chose a number over 10, in that specific column to ensure that the average couldn’t work out at 2…..
I don’t claim to know exactly how he managed it, as Paul Daniels claimed ‘there are lots of possible ways to do it,’ but using deep hypnosis and free writing was definitely not one of them. The man is a master of illusion and what we saw on Wednesday was exactly that..an illusion.
One of my favourite bits of last night’s show was the part where by using ‘deep’ maths he was able to beat a man in a sequential game of heads or tails. These kind of Maths problems have always fascinated me and if you can use them to make a few quid down the pub it’s even better. You don’t have to be able to explain why it works as long as you know that it does!
One of the most famous of these maths phenomenoms (and also a great way of making a few quid off your mates) is the age-old Birthday Paradox. Quite simply it relies on the odds of two people in a room sharing the same birthday. In a room of 30 people what odds would you give on this event occuring?….. 365/1? 33/1? 20/1? 8/1? Evens?
If anyone wants to lay me any of those odds I’ll take them as suprisingly the true odds of two people sharing the same birthday in a sample of just 30 people is actually under 4/6!! In fact you would only need 23 people in a room for the odds to be even money.
So if you were thinking about inviting 24 strangers around to your house to try and use Derren Browns method of winning the lottery you’d actually be better off having an even £10 on two of them sharing the same birthday rather than trying to pick 3 winning numbers.
Note that it’s not the odds of someone sharing the same birthday as yourself but any two people in the room being born on the same day.
——-
Before I have a look at today’s offering a word about yesterday’s horse. I had a few emails regarding the price of Glowing Praise, which I had put up at 40/1, as apparently it didn’t last too long. When I wrote the post at about 8a.m. according to oddschecker.com it was 40/1 with Blue Square and one other firm who I can’t remember. I obviously wasn’t the only one who fancied it yesterday as by 9.30 the best price available was 16/1 meaning a lot of you weren’t able to get on that price. Sorry if you missed out but hopefully the collapse in the price deterred a lot of you from backing it as the horse finished, as all good each-way bets tend to do, one spot outside the places in 4th.
……At least the jockey remembered to take the blindfold off this time!
———
Gary’s Portland Preview
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this particular feature are not necessarily those of the Nag-Nag-Nag Site or its authors. The Nag3 team can accept no liabilites regarding any possible losses from following these selections 
In this race last year I was very keen on the chances of Sirens Gift, a trail blazer, who was only caught in the final 50yds by 2 fast finishers, Hogmaneigh and River Falcon. In that race the 1st 4 home were drawn 18-9-14-21 on soft ground and the year before they were 21-11-14-12 on good/firm. With this years ground looking to be on the fast side you could be mistaken for thinking that you need a high draw. Well, with Cheveton on Saturday his draw (1) didn’t look good according to the draw analysis but with the pace all on his side he got a good tow along and I feel it’s very much the same here. Looking at the draw the pace all seems low with Judge ‘N Jury(8), Cheveton(5), Ishetoo(1), Pavershooz(6) and Striking Spirit(7) all confirmed front runners and it looks highly likely they will dominate the early stages but with J’NJ and Cheveton being 5F specialists this extra 140yds may well see them off. Markhab the likely fav is drawn well in stall 4 but will have to defeat the ratings as no horse rated over 100 has won this in the last 15years.
If I am wrong about the draw then Everymanforhimself looks the best bet from those drawn high or if the winner comes from the middle then the oldest horse in the race River Falcon gets my vote. Age has proved no barrier to success in the Portland over the last decade with Halmahera winning 3 times at the ages of 7,8 & 9 and Fantasy Believer winning aged 8 on his 4th run in the race.
We do have 3 horses on hat-tricks here Jaconet, Johannes and Santo Padre but I think this may be a step too far for them all. Another runner in tremendous form is Pavershooz who has won 3 of his last 4 with his only defeat coming against Striking Spirit. He meets that particular runner on 3lb worse terms today and it is he that is my idea of the best EW value and likeliest winner…..
Striking Spirit, trained by D.Nicholls, is drawn in 7 and ran in both the Stewards cup at Goodwood (finishing 8th) and the Great St Wilfred at Ripon (finishing 7th) from the unfavoured stands side. Despite running well in both races his rating has dropped from 103 at Goodwood and 100 at Ripon to 98 today which in my book makes the 33/1 offered by Ladbrokes an outstanding ew punt.
Best of luck Gary! And don’t forget your big brother when you’re using a wheelbarrow to pick up your winnings.
Good luck,
September 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Gavin,
I can tell you without question that to “predict” the lottery numers Wednesday night, Derren Brown used nothing more than a cheap video editing technique. He used what is called a split-screen transition. What we are looking at is two different images spliced together to seem as one. The image of Derren and the tv is live while the image of the balls on the stand is a still image recorded earlier. So as the lotto numbers are being read out, a stagehand will simply place the correct balls onto the stand while all the while we are watching prerecorded footage of the stand from earlier. Then the stagehand walks away and they simply return to the full live image when Derren approaches the balls. This transition is seemless as the camera remains still so you do not notice anything.
So there you have it, the prediction was nothing more than shoddy camera trickery, much like that hack Criss Angel uses all the time. Well done Derren!