The Numbers Lab

The founding facts

Every draw is independent. The balls have no memory. A combination's probability on the next draw is identical no matter what happened in any previous draw — 1 in 1,000 for a Numbers straight, always.

The 50-cent dollar. Every bet type in Numbers and Win 4 returns $0.479–$0.50 per $1 in expectation; Take 5 returns $0.50 per $1 by the construction of its prize pool. No choice of numbers changes those figures.

We tested "what's hot" before publishing it. A pre-registered backtest of hot, cold/due and pair-following strategies on the New York history (8,652 bets per strategy cell) found no edge: pooled across the straight-bet cells, the strategies hit 51 times against 51.9 expected from chance alone. The full verdict is on the Predictions page.

Latest results

Latest settled edition: Wednesday, November 4, 2026 — the most recent draw day in the official feed.

Results and the archive — settled editions publish the morning after each draw day, on the official feed's own cadence.

The section

Games covered: NY Numbers (Pick 3) and Win 4 (Pick 4), midday and evening daily; Take 5, midday and evening daily; Millionaire for Life, nightly ($5). Mega Millions and Powerball are out of scope — at 1-in-290-million top-prize odds there is no frequency record to track honestly, and their expected value moves with the jackpot.

Archive note: Cash4Life ended on February 21, 2026 and was replaced by Millionaire for Life the next day. It is not a live game and the section keeps no coverage of it beyond this note.

Official results: NY State Open Data (data.ny.gov), datasets hsys-3def, dg63-4siq, a4w9-a3tp. The feed posts the morning after each draw day.