From once a week to four times a week

The UK's National Lottery started as a Saturday night, once a week draw. It spread to twice a week with a Wednesday draw and then added a Euro lottery on a Friday. Tonight the Euro Lottery goes bi-weekly. Add to that Thunderball, daily draws and heaven knows what else and playing the lottery could be a very, very expensive occupation.

Statistics help required re the National Lottery

The Telegraph have a helpful table of the winning lottery numbers for each of the last 15 year's lotteries.

Now because I am a bit geeky, I put the figures into Excel to do some analysis but right away I spotted something odd. If you add up all the times that each ball has been drawn in the main draw you get 8,742 which when divided by 6 (the number of drawn balls in each main draw) gives you 1,457 draws. However if you add the number of times each ball has been drawn as the bonus ball (one per draw) you get not 1,457 but 1,451 - WHY?

I refuse to do any analysis until I have solved this basic query!

The funding industry

The BBC are excited to report that:

"Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, the top secret code-breaking hub of World War II, has been awarded nearly £500,000 of lottery funds.

The development money from the Heritage Lottery Fund will help the historic site become a world heritage and educational centre.

It is the first step towards a target of £10m to completely revamp the site. "

That's odd I thought, why would the money come in two tranches; first £500,000 then £10,000,000? Bletchley Park News seems to have the answer:

"The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has given the green light to the Bletchley Park Trust to work up plans to help transform Bletchley Park into a world class heritage and educational centre it was announced today. Development funding of £460,500 was awarded to help progress their plans.
The HLF first-round pass* means that the Bletchley Park Trust can now progress to the second stage of the HLF application process. They have up to two years to submit more detailed plans and apply for approximately £4.1 million of HLF support that they are seeking for their £10 million project.

...

*A first-round pass means the project meets HLF criteria for funding and they believe it has potential to deliver high-quality benefits and value for Lottery money. The application was in competition with other supportable projects, so a first-round pass is an endorsement of outline proposals.

However, a first-round pass does not guarantee the applicant will receive a grant as the second-round application will still be in competition for funding, and no money is set aside at this stage. Having been awarded a first-round pass, the project now has up to two years to submit fully developed proposals to compete for a firm award.
On occasion an applicant with a first-round pass will also be awarded development funding towards the development of their scheme."

Am I right in my reading that the £460,000 is to fund the application for the £10,000,000 of funding? Does it really cost that much to fill in an application form and send a business plan? How much is this funding acquirement industry worth per annum? What percentage of Heritage Lottery Fund money is spent on such funding compared to what is spent on actual projects?

Too many people trying to win the Euro Millions Lottery last night?

"Game Play and Sign In are temporarily unavailable

We are currently experiencing extremely high levels of traffic and have temporarily reached our maximum number of requests. Rest assured that we value your custom so please try again shortly.

In the meantime, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience."

UPDATE:
And this morning too many people desperate to see if they had won enough to get away from this ruined Country:

"Online services are currently unavailable.

We are currently experiencing high levels of traffic to the National Lottery website. Service will be resumed shortly. Please try again shortly otherwise, if you are registered, you can Play by Text. Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience."

Tories proposing Lottery reforms

Just read the BBC report on the Conservative party's proposals to reform the National Lottery. See the BBC can do an unbiased piece if they really try - must be an aberration.