Activities Hobbies How to Create a Lottery Strategy Using the Most Popular Numbers Different Lottery Systems That Use Most- and Least-Drawn Numbers Share PINTEREST Email Print Popular Lottery Numbers Can Be Used to Make a Lottery Strategy. Image (c) askhamdesign / Getty Images Hobbies Contests Lotteries Basics Tips and Tricks Dream Vacations Win Money Win Electronics Home and Garden Win Vehicles Jewelry and Clothing Types of Contests Creative Contests Scams Couponing Freebies Frugal Living Fine Arts & Crafts Astrology Card Games & Gambling Cars & Motorcycles Playing Music Learn More Table of Contents Expand The Most Popular Numbers Which Numbers are Most Popular? A Reminder By Sandra Grauschopf Sandra Grauschopf Facebook Twitter Writer University of Maryland Sandra Grauschopf has been working in the contests industry since 2002. She is a passionate sweeper, with tens of thousands of dollars worth of prize wins to her name, and she has been sharing advice about how to be a winner for over a decade. Learn about our Editorial Process Updated on 07/30/20 Some people like to play the lottery by letting a computer make their quick picks, or by picking random numbers themselves. Others like to be more methodical about the numbers they play. If you want to create a lottery system, one popular thing to look at is which numbers are the most popular. .There are a few different ways to use popularity to come up with a lottery system. Plus, you'll also find out where to get the information about which numbers are drawn more or less frequently. Three Ways to Use Popular Lottery Numbers Playing The NumbersOne line of thinking is that if certain numbers come up more frequently than others, then they are the best ones to play. You can create a lottery strategy by mining the lottery data to find which numbers are drawn most often and playing those numbers.Avoiding the NumbersAnother way of thinking is that if a number has appeared recently, it is less likely to show up again. It's like if you've just flipped a coin three times and it's landed on heads each time, then you might bet on tails showing up the fourth time.To use this strategy, map out which numbers have been popular recently and avoid selecting them on your lottery tickets.Combining the NumbersA final way to put popular numbers to work for you is to look at the frequency of various combinations being drawn as winners. Does 3 show up most often with 59? Is it rare to see 1 followed by 2?You can look for other patterns, too, like how many odd versus even numbers appear, or how often consecutive numbers tend to be drawn. There are a lot of different ways to mine the data if you enjoy looking for patterns. How to Find Out Which Lottery Numbers Are Most Popular If you want to look at popular numbers for a specific time range, you can get them directly from the lottery's website. For example, Powerball.com lets you put in a start and end date and will display all the winning numbers during those dates. This is particularly useful when you are trying to avoid numbers that have been played recently because you only want to consider the last few drawings. The results are easy to gather, making it a cinch to determine how popular each of the winning numbers are. Sometimes, though, you want to look at lottery numbers over a longer period of time. In this case, you can simplify things by using a website like LottoNumbers.com, which does all the work for you. They let you pick a date range that spans a set of years, letting you track a frequency count for that range. Just remember that changes in the lottery may affect the popularity of the winning numbers. For example, in 2015, Powerball added ten more numbers to its main pool of white balls and reduced the number of possible red Powerball numbers from 35 to 26. This might skew the most popular numbers. Sites like Powerball-Megamillions.com give you both ways of analyzing popular numbers. They show you how often a number was drawn and how long ago it last hit. So if you want to look for the numbers that have been frequently drawn but are "due" for another drawing, these charts make it easy. A Reminder About ALL Lottery Strategies Lottery strategies can be fun to develop and to play, but are they effective? The answer, generally, is no. Each number has an equally high chance of being drawn, regardless of past performance. Just because a number has been drawn many times in the past, doesn't mean it will show up when you play. And just because a number was a winner in the last drawing, doesn't mean it won't show up again in the next one. Using popular numbers to create a lottery strategy is entertaining, but statistically, it won't change your very, very long odds of winning a lottery jackpot. So remember to play responsibly and not to spend any money on tickets that you can't afford to lose.