Don't beat yourself up for being an almost lottery winner. There's no such thing.

I was reading through an article with recommendations on how office lottery pools can fairly play the lottery as a group.  There were some good points, but two in particular that got me thinking.  This led me to conclude that two of the points taken together are fallacious.  In a nutshell, one says "let the computer pick the numbers" and the other says "play every week so you don't miss the week that hits".  However, the truth is, if the computer picks the numbers on a week you didn't play, it would not have picked those same numbers if you had played.

Quick Pick lottery numbers (I use the Powerball term to cover all computer generated tickets) are generated at each terminal by a random number algorithm probably seeded by something unpredictable like atmospheric or electrical noise.  Many people have the misconception that if a lottery winner comes from a store in their neighborhood, they were much closer to winning than someone on the other side of the country because if they had been next in line instead of THAT person, they would have won.  Not true.  If we assume that your being there has no impact on the seeding mechanism of Quick Pick, the time factor alone is mind numbing.  There are limitless ways to interact with the checkout clerk to ask for a lottery ticket and if the button that generates that ticket were not pressed at the exact millisecond as before, you may as well have been a million miles away from that store.  Maybe the clerk pauses because you remind him/her of someone, or maybe you preface your request with "Um", or maybe the other winner had asked for tickets three times to be understood because of their accent.  Regardless, different numbers will be generated.

So let's assume that your lucky office pool buys some tickets and wins without your participation.  If you called in sick that day, your team merely thinking about your absence changed their behavior enough to generate the winning circumstances.  Said another way, if someone wins from playing Quick Pick, it's because everyone and everything behaved exactly as it did and the game was played at that exact location at that exact second.  This sounds like science fiction, but it is not.  This indeterminate randomness is absolutely necessary; otherwise, someone would have cracked the lottery by now.

This knowledge may not allay the jealousy you feel from seeing your coworker's new found wealth, but it can at least spare you the misery of continuously reliving the "what if" scenarios in your head.  About the only thing you can say with near certainty in this case is "Damn!  If only I had played the lottery with my team that day!  Then they would not have won and I would not have the misery of closely knowing the jackpot winners and seeing firsthand how much fun they get to have!"

sources:  http://www.molottery.com/powerball/understanding_chances.jsp
              http://www.ehow.com/how_2073998_enter-lottery-coworkers.html