Where does the lowest Powerball number land, and the highest?
Powerball has been drawn as 5 numbers from 69 plus a Powerball from 26 since October 2015. Everything on this page counts only the 1,419 draws since that change.
Across 1,419 Powerball draws the lowest number has sat 10.84 places above the bottom of the pool on average, and the highest 10.42 places below the top, where chance predicts 10.67 at both ends.
Chance predicts those two gaps to carry exactly the same distribution, whatever the pool size, so the difference between them is the thing worth reading: it comes to 0.42 of a place where chance predicts none, which is 1.08 standard errors. The bottom end has run the wider of the two, by that much of a place per draw. That is inside the range ordinary variation produces over a record this long.
What was measured two numbers per draw
Sort a draw and keep only its ends. Draw 1419 was 2228385169, so its lowest number is 22 and its highest 69. The two readings are the gaps those leave at the edges, and in that draw 22 sits 21 places above the bottom while 69 is the top of the pool itself. The three numbers in between are not read here at all.
Both gaps carry the same chance of being d places wide, namely C(N − 1 − d, 5 − 1) divided by C(N, 5) from a pool of N, and they carry it for the same reason: turning the pool back to front maps every draw onto another draw just as likely as the first, and swaps the two ends while it does so. So the mirror image is not an approximation to check, it is what chance predicts exactly, and the prediction for the bottom end and the prediction for the top end are the same column of numbers below. This game has drawn from one pool of 69 numbers throughout, so the predicted gap has been 10.67 places at both ends for every draw on record. The per draw sum is kept anyway, because it stays right if the pool ever changes.
The record 1,419 draws, 16 readings
Red marks a figure outside the range ordinary variation produces
| Gap | Chance | Below the lowest | Above the highest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 102.8 | 94-0.90 | 117+1.45 |
| 1 | 96.8 | 92-0.50 | 92-0.50 |
| 2 | 91.0 | 98+0.76 | 90-0.11 |
| 3 | 85.5 | 81-0.50 | 73-1.39 |
| 4 | 80.2 | 84+0.43 | 76-0.49 |
| 5 to 7 | 211.5 | 209-0.19 | 244+2.42 |
| 8 to 11 | 222.5 | 215-0.55 | 226+0.26 |
| 12 or more | 528.7 | 546+0.95 | 501-1.52 |
One chance column, two records read against it. The small figure beside each count is how far it sits from that prediction in standard errors, and the prediction comes from each draw's own pool, so a row means the same thing across the whole record. The commonest single gap is 2 below the lowest and 0 above the highest, while chance puts 0 first at both ends. The last row is an open ended tail that gathers every gap from 12 upwards, so it is large by construction and is kept out of that comparison.
The table reads 16 counts in all, and the furthest of them from its prediction is 2.42 standard errors out. Chance alone predicts 0.2 of the 16 that far out, so reading 16 of them does not on its own account for a reading that far out. The table prints one of them in red. The counts in a column add up to every draw on record, so they lean on one another; the predicted number of extreme readings above is still exact, because a prediction for one count does not depend on what the others do.
Reading the ends against each other instead of against the table, the bottom end has been the tighter of the two in 666 draws where chance predicts 683.0, with 53 draws level at both ends against a predicted 53.0. Chance has to split the rest of them evenly, again by the mirror image. What is left between the two ends is the span from the lowest number to the highest, and it averages 46.73 against a predicted 46.67, which is the same reading seen from the middle: the two gaps and the span have to add up to the pool less one, so a span above prediction is two gaps below it.
Recent trend last 100 draws, then blocks of 20
Over the last 100 draws the difference between the two ends comes to 0.23 of a place in favour of the bottom end, against the nothing chance predicts, which is 0.16 standard errors. That is a short enough stretch that the range ordinary variation produces is wide, which is what the band in the charts below is for.
Mean gap below the lowest number, one point per block of 20 draws
result for the blockrange ordinary variation allowsoutside that range
Mean gap above the highest number, one point per block of 20 draws
result for the blockrange ordinary variation allowsoutside that range
Oldest block on the left, newest on the right, one chart for each end. The band is what chance predicts for those same draws, worked out from their own pools, and a point outside it is marked. Blocks of 20 draws carry a wide band because one draw opening on the bottom number and one opening twenty places up pull a block of that size a long way.
Applied to this draw draw 1419 · 2026-10-12
Draw 1419 was 2228385169 from a pool of 69, and chance predicts 10.67 places of room at each edge of a draw from that pool.
This draw sat tighter at the top than at the bottom, as 700 of the 1,419 draws on record have, where chance predicts 683.0 either way round. Where the edges of a draw sit says nothing about the edges of the next one, and the record above is the record of where they have sat.
Related statistics
Share this page
If this report does not answer your question, tell us what you need and we will look at building it. Contact