Has the same group of three Powerball numbers come up again?
Powerball has been drawn as 5 numbers from 69 plus a Powerball from 26 since October 2015. Everything on this page counts only the 1,421 draws since that change.
Of the 52,394 groups of three that the Powerball pool allows, 12,425 have been drawn at least once and 39,969 are still waiting, where chance predicts 39,947.
The most any one group has managed is four times, and ten groups have done it. Most of the groups the pool allows are still waiting for a first appearance, so the tally below is mostly empty space. Each draw holds ten groups of three, which makes 14,210 drawn in all, spread over 52,394 slots, so the repeats are arithmetic rather than a pattern.
What was measured ten groups per draw
A group of three here is simply three of the pool's numbers, in no order. Draw 1421 was 1213243235, and 121324 is one of the ten groups of three it holds, because any three of its numbers make one. Counted that way the record has drawn 14,210 groups across 1,421 draws, and the pool allows 52,394.
One named group sits inside one draw with probability 10 in 52,394, or about 1.9 chances in ten thousand at the pool of 69. This game has drawn from one pool of 69 numbers throughout, so that same rate stands behind every draw read. Each prediction below is still worked out at its own draw's pool, because that stays right if the pool ever changes.
Sorting the groups by their largest number is what keeps that straight. There are exactly C(m − 1, 2) groups whose largest number is m, and they were available in precisely the draws whose pool reaches m. Since the pools read here only ever grow, all the groups that became available at the same pool size share the same run of chances, so they can be taken together in one band. Every prediction on this page is a sum over the draws that could actually have produced the group. Raw counts alone would rank the groups by how long they have existed rather than by how often they have turned up.
The record 52,394 groups, 6 rows
Red marks a figure outside the range ordinary variation produces
| Times a group has been drawn | Chance | Groups |
|---|---|---|
| Never | 39,946.976.24% | 39,96976.29% |
| Once | 10,836.220.68% | 10,79220.60% |
| Twice | 1,468.72.80% | 1,4912.85% |
| Three times | 132.60.2531% | 1320.2519% |
| Four times | 8.970.0171% | 100.0191% |
| Five times or more | 0.510.0010% | 00.0000% |
Each row is a number of appearances and how many groups have exactly that many, beside the number chance predicts and the share of all 52,394 groups it comes to. The predictions add up to 52,394 exactly, so the table compares the shape of the record against the shape chance predicts and not its size. The biggest row in the record is the groups never drawn, and chance puts the same row first. Counted as appearances instead of groups, 14,210 groups were drawn and 12,425 of them were different, so 1,785 appearances were repeats where chance predicts 1,763. One row here gathers several tallies at once, every tally of five or more, so it is bound to be larger than its neighbours for that reason alone. The record reaches exactly as far as chance predicts it should: at four times drawn, chance still predicts at least one group, and beyond that it predicts less than one.
Nothing in the table is printed in red, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. The groups are not independent of one another: one draw lifts ten of them at once, and they share numbers. Expectation is still exactly additive, which is why every prediction above is exact, but the spread of those counts would need the covariance between groups that share numbers, and that is not honestly available here. A range would have to be invented, so none is given. The figures on this page that do carry ranges are read a different way, draw by draw, in the next section.
The one exception above is the fourth figure, the groups held from one draw to the next. That one is read from pairs of draws taken one after another, and because the draws are independent of each other its prediction and its range are both exact. Across the 1,420 pairs of draws read one after another, 2 groups have been held over, where chance predicts 2.71, which is 0.40 standard errors below it.
At the far end, here are groups that reached the record high of four times drawn, with the draws that held them.
Chance predicts 9.5 groups drawn four times or more and the record has 10. Nothing here is printed in red, and that too is deliberate: these groups were picked out for being the most drawn, so marking them as unusual would only repeat how they were chosen. The highest of 52,394 tallies is above the average by definition, and the honest reading of it is the pair of figures just given.
Read draw by draw how much of a draw is already on record
The same record read the other way round. Going into a draw, some number of groups are already on record, and the draw lifts ten groups of three, some of which may be among them. That count has an exact prediction, the groups on record multiplied by the chance of any one of them being drawn, and an exact range, because a draw's prediction is read off the draws before it and never off itself. So the differences from draw to draw do not lean on one another: they add up, and so do the variances.
A single draw's count is lumpy rather than smooth, because its groups of three overlap each other: numbers that have often been drawn together before bring several old groups in at once. The most any one draw has carried is 7, in draw 809, where the prediction for that draw was 1.44. That figure carries no red mark, because the highest of 1,421 draws is above the average by definition.
The record had to start from nothing, and a draw can only repeat what came before it. Across the first 100 draws read, 7 of the groups drawn were already on record against a predicted 9.4. Across the last 100, that figure is 229 against 229.7, which is 0.05 standard errors below it. The rise between the two is the record growing, not the draws changing.
Groups per draw already on record, 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. The band is what chance predicts for those same draws, worked out from each draw's own pool and from the groups that were on record going into it, and a point outside it is marked. No point sits outside the band here. Across ten blocks, chance alone puts 0.5 of them outside, so a point outside the band would not be explained by the number of blocks read.
Applied to this draw draw 1421 · 2026-10-17
Draw 1421 was 1213243235 from a pool of 69, which holds ten groups of three. One of them had been drawn before, where chance predicted 2.37, which is 0.95 standard errors below it. That leaves nine groups here that the pool had never produced until now.
The groups in this draw with the longest records, counting this draw.
That list starts at the top of the ten groups this draw holds, so its first line is where a sorted list has to begin rather than a group that is owed anything, and it carries no red mark for the same reason.
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