I thought it about time I came back to one of my pet subjects... luck, randomness and the odds in bingo.

It was sparked by a fellow ex-Bingo caller telling me that he thought that he had definitely called more of certain numbers than others in his long career. He was convinced that he had called the number 11 more than any other number! Of course he had no proof of this; he had not been recording all the numbers he had called.

Under cross-examination I managed to get him to admit that it could be that he recalled some numbers more easily than others.  For example, a “boring” number such as 43 would be more difficult to recollect than 1 (Kelly’s Eye) or 90 (Top of the Shop). I finally got him to agree that because there was audience participation in numbers like 22 (two little ducks… Quack! Quack!) and 11 (legs eleven..accompanied by the wolf whistle) that would make calling them stick in your mind more.  

But some things about randomness seem counter-intuitive to me. For example, there is exactly the same chance of numbers being called out in numerical order, from 1 through to 90, than any other combination of the 90 numbers you may want to write down.  However the chances of even the first 5 numbers called being 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, seem to me more unlikely than say, 27, 49, 3, 87, and 22. However my Accountant friend assures me that, over a suitably long period of time there can only be true randomness in Bingo numbers being called. If that were not the case, then the number generation system must be rigged!

So what does it seem like to you as a Bingo Café player? Do you have a lucky number that seems to come up more often than others? 7 is ever-popular of course, or 8 if you are of Asian origin, and other lucky numbers are formed through Birthdays, astrological signs, and even car registration numbers!  There are even online “lucky” number generators where you put in various details about yourself, and hey presto, you get a set of lucky numbers for you to use in the Lottery, Bingo, or anything else.

However, each lucky number has the same chance of being called, so if you find that your lucky number is indeed, lucky, well then you are incredibly... Lucky!