DO ALL BINGO CARDS HAVE THE SAME ODDS OF WINNING? A WAS TO SEE
Bingo is a game of frustration. You get a card with 25
numbers on it; five to a row. The rows are picked from these ranges:
ROW 1 1-15
ROW 2 16-30
ROW 3 31-45
ROW 4 46-60
ROW 5 61-75
Other people get cards too.
Numbers are called out at random from 1 to 75. If one of your numbers
is called, you cover it. You will if you’re the first one to have
five numbers in a row, including diagonals; so there are twelve ways to win.
My first reaction to this game was extreme boredom; then I got into it.
If you believe in luck or somehow think you have a better card then it is interesting.
Someone said to me there are lucky numbers that win more. There
are at least two theories claiming some numbers or combinations
of numbers win more.
I was curious. I wrote a BASIC computer program to find the answer:
Are there better BINGO cards than win more often?
My BASIC program can play about 1000 games a second.
I made random cards and played with them automatically.
I found the number of times a card won in 1000 game trials before
the 25th number was called. It seemed to me that, that is the number
you usually have to win by to win.
I saved the data for each card; amount of wins before the 25th number
is called.
I then used the same cards to run a second 1000 game trial for each card.
I saved this data.
I got an average for both lists; the average number it took cards
to win.
Then I compared the two lists, looking for consistency; that is
in both trials, where card that were better in trial 1, better in trial 2.
The final result of this was around 25%
That is, cards that were better in trial 1 were also better in trial 2.
This shows that cards have an equal chance of being better than
average in two games trial of 1000 games each.
25% chance of these outcomes:
in both trials a card was above average
in both trials a card was below average
in trial 1 a card was above average and in trial 2 below average
in trial 2 a card was below average and in trial 1 below average
CONCLUSION: Bingo cards have an equal change of being better at winning.
DISCUSION:
It is disappointing to find this result, but confirms
the laws of statistics. If you just look at the list of wins, some cards
do excel and sometimes they excel both times. However; overall, in 1000 games,
this does not hold true.
I think I will also test for extremely good cards. That is, do cards that are
much better in one trial win more often in a second trial.
THE END
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