A winning strategy for lotto games?

In lotto games, the distribution of k-tuples chosen by participants is not uniform, but the chance of any k-tuple being the winner is the same. The winning categories consist of matching exactly k — i numbers from the winning k-tuple for i = 0, 1, …, m for some m. The total prize pool for a category is divided equally among all the winning tickets in the category. Therefore the strategy of buying a ticket with a k-tuple consisting of unpopular numbers will increase the expected amount of the prize if this k-tuple is a winner in some category, because the prize pool is shared among fewer tickets. By modelling the distribution of 6-tuples chosen by participants of Lotto 6/49 in Canada, the expected return and standard deviation of return can be computed. It is shown that the expected return can be more than the amount spent when the carryover is large, but the large standard deviation means that it would take tens of thousands of years to millions of years for the strategy to have a high probability of yielding a profit.     

The national provident fund model: An analytical and evaluative reassessment

Both earlier and current analytical perspectives on appropriate modes of delivering retirement provision have tended to underestimate both the inherent adaptability and the developmental potentialities of the national provident fund (NPF) model. The essence of this model is found in the welfare salience of the possibility of synergy between the NPF's direct (retirement provision) and indirect (development finance institution) roles in developing political economies. Diffusion is found to be important in the development of the NPF model from Asian origins and in its subsequent retention in a limited number of states. NPF "success stories" are few in number but potentially significant given their regional concentration and impact, the latter currently underlined by further expansion and development of existing NPFs and by recently renewed prospects for regional diffusion of the model. Further examination of the significantly enhanced welfare outcomes achieved through the creative utilization of existing NPFs underlines the potentiality for NPF-led development within "pillarized" retirement provision.