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Mathematicians at The University of Manchester have answered the question: How many lottery tickets do you need to buy to guarantee wining something on the UK National Lottery? 

Focusing on the National Lottery青瓜视频檚 flagship game 青瓜视频楲otto青瓜视频�, which draws six random numbers from 1 to 59, and found that 27 is the lowest possible number of tickets needed to guarantee a win 青瓜视频� although, importantly, with no guarantee of a profit.  

They describe the solution using a mathematical system called finite geometry, which centres around a triangle-like structure called a Fano plane. Each point of the structure is plotted with pairs of numbers and connected with lines 青瓜视频� each line generates a set of six numbers, which equates to one ticket. 

It takes three Fano planes and two triangles to cover all 59 numbers and generate 27 sets of tickets. 

Choosing tickets in this way guarantees that no matter which of the 45,057,474 possible draws occurs, at least one of the tickets will have at least two numbers in common. From any draw of six, two numbers must appear on one of the five geometric structures, which ensures they appear on at least one ticket.  

But Dr Stewart and Dr Cushing say that the hard work is actually showing that achieving the same outcome with 26 tickets is not possible. 

Dr David Stewart, a Reader in Pure Mathematics at The University of Manchester, said: 青瓜视频淔undamentally there is a tension which comes from the fact that there are only 156 entries on 26 tickets. This means a lot of numbers can青瓜视频檛 appear a lot of times. Eventually you see that you青瓜视频檒l be able to find six numbers that don青瓜视频檛 appear on any ticket together. In graph theory terms, we end up proving the existence of an independent set of size six.青瓜视频� 

Although guaranteed a win, the researchers say that the chances of making a profit are very unlikely and shouldn青瓜视频檛 be used as a reason to gamble.  

The 27 lottery tickets would set you back 青瓜视频54. And Peter Rowlett, a mathematician from The Aperiodical website, has shown that in almost 99% of cases, you wouldn青瓜视频檛 make that money back.  

When putting the theory to the test in the lottery draw on 1 July 2023; the researchers matched just two balls on three of the tickets, the reward being three lucky dip tries on a subsequent lottery, each of which came to nothing. 

The researchers say that the finding is interesting from a computational point of view. They use a fifty-year-old programming language called Prolog, which they say makes it one of the oldest examples of real artificial intelligence.

The 27 sets of lottery ticket numbers