LANSING, Mich. — One day's Michigan Lottery drawings had some people seeing double.
The winning numbers for the Midday Daily 4 on Thursday afternoon and the Daily 4 numbers drawn that evening were the same: zero, two, two and nine.
“It's one of those things that hasn't happened in recent memory,” Michigan Lottery spokesman Jeff Holyfield said. “Sometimes you have coincidences like that.”
He said 540 winning tickets were sold for the midday drawing and 650 for the afternoon drawing. Each winning ticket is worth $5,000. The odds of winning one drawing are 1 in 10,000.
The odds of the same numbers occurring twice are the same odds as winning, said Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It falls in the non-spooky category,” he said.
Holyfield said the same sequence of numbers came up Dec. 5.
He said he did not have information on any winners coming forward yet, but that it was likely there would be double winners.
“People play the same numbers,” Holyfield said. “The odds are that there is at least one player, probably more, who won $10,000.”
It is not the first time a Daily 4 drawing has caused such a buzz. Holyfield said a drawing last year had winning numbers of one, one, one and one.
The average number of winners for the midday drawing is 340 and 850 for the afternoon drawing.
But the one, one, one and one drawing had a whopping 3,700 winning tickets sold for a total payout of more than $18 million.
Tickets for the Midday Daily 4 and the Daily 4 lotteries cost $1 each.
