Subject: Lottery possibilities

My name is Steve and this is a question probably fitting the secondary level.

In our state lottery you must choose 6 numbers (1-49). How many different combinations are there? They can be in any order.

Thanks.

This is the number of ways of choosing 6 objects from 49 objects. These numbers are sometimes called the binomial coefficients. The number of ways of choosing 6 objects from 49 objects is 13,983,816. Thus you have a 1 in 13,983,816 chance of winning, about one chance in 14 million. No wonder the lotteries make so much money!