Abstract
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.
Keywords: lotteries, gambling, number preference, color preference, implicit egotism, availability, position effect, law of
small numbers, representativeness, gambler’s fallacy, hot-hand fallacy.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 243-259 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Judgment and Decision Making |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 3 |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |