Statistics

How a Powerball drawing works

Powerball drawings are held every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 10:59 pm ET, at the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee. The official numbers are the ones recorded under the observation of an independent accounting firm.

Five white balls are drawn from 1–69 and one red Powerball from 1–26. Those are two separate pools, which is why every table on this page counts them apart. A white-ball count and a Powerball count describe different events, even when they carry the same number.

Monday drawings were added on August 23, 2021, bringing the schedule to three a week — 156 drawings a year. Powerball stated at the time that the third drawing changed neither the game odds nor the set cash prizes. What it did change is calendar coverage: a 50-draw window now spans about four months, where the same 50 draws once covered close to six.

How to read these numbers

These notes explain what each metric counts from past draws.

Hot / cold numbers

White balls and the Powerball are drawn from separate pools, so this counts which numbers came up most and least over the last 50 draws (or all draws) for each pool. Change the window and the ranking shifts — that's a record of the past, not a lead into the next draw.

Most overdue

White balls and the Powerball are drawn from separate pools, so this counts, for each pool, how many draws have passed since a number last appeared. A long gap doesn't make a number "due" — a draw doesn't remember the ones before it.

Odd/even · high/low

The average split of odd vs even and low vs high numbers in a draw. It sits near half-and-half because the numbers divide roughly in half to begin with.

Sum distribution

Where the sum of the five white balls tends to land. It's a bell shape because far more combinations add up to a middle sum than to the extremes.

Last-digit distribution

How evenly the ones digit (0–9) came up. Small leads even out as the sample grows.

Consecutive-number ratio

The share of draws that included a run like 43·44. It shows up more than people expect, because a combination has many spots for a pair to sit next to each other.

AC value distribution

Sums up how varied the gaps between the five white balls are into a single figure (0–10). It shows how spread out a combination is, nothing more.

Frequent pairs

How many times two numbers came up in the same draw. A pair may overlap a lot, but that only counts draws that have already happened.

Monthly trend

The most-drawn numbers grouped by month. Each month's sample is small and jumpy, so the differences are mostly noise.

Why these counts start in October 2015

Powerball has not always used a 1–69 pool. On October 7, 2015, the white balls went from 1–59 to 1–69 and the red Powerball went from 1–35 to 1–26. The jackpot odds moved in the same change, from roughly 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292,201,338.

That is why the counts on this page begin with the October 7, 2015 draw. Balls 60 through 69 did not exist before it, and 27 through 35 were live Powerball numbers then but are not now. Counting the two eras together would stack two different games into one column.

Why fair draws produce uneven counts

Five numbers come out per draw, so 50 draws produce 250 white-ball appearances spread across 69 balls — about 3.6 each. The tables never show 3.6 each. In a 50-draw window the leading ball usually sits around eight, and a ball or two have not come up at all.

That spread is what an even chance looks like at a small sample size, and it tightens in a specific way. Over 50 draws the most-drawn ball tends to have more than twice the average count. Over 500 draws it is usually less than 1.5 times the average, even though its raw lead over the average has grown. Counts spread further apart in absolute terms as draws accumulate, and closer together as a share of the total.

So a ranked list will always have a top and a bottom, at any window length. The ranking describes the draws inside the window.

Common questions

Does a long gap make a number due?

No. Every drawing starts from the same full pool — 69 white balls and 26 Powerballs — no matter what came out on Saturday. The gap column is a count of drawings that have already been held.

50 draws or all draws?

They answer different questions. The 50-draw window shows the most recent four months or so, which makes it jumpy: a single drawing moves the ranking. The all-draws view covers every drawing since October 7, 2015, so the counts settle and the ordering changes slowly. Both are records of drawings that have already been held; the difference is how many.

Can one number be in both lists?

Yes. Numbers 1 through 26 belong to both pools, so 12 can show up as a white ball and as the Powerball. Keep the two counts apart: a given white ball comes up on average once every 13.8 draws, while a given Powerball comes up once every 26. The columns are not on the same scale.