Generate five Mega Millions plays — 5 white balls from 1–70 plus one gold Mega Ball from 1–24 — using a Benford's law algorithm. Benford's law says the leading digit of real-world numbers is a 1 about 30.1% of the time and a 9 only 4.6%, following P(d)=log₁₀(1+1/d), and this generator applies that distribution to the draw. A live chart shows the leading digits you actually got, and you can switch to plain uniform random to compare.
Mega Millions is a multi-state game sold in 45 states plus Washington D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Five white balls are drawn from a 1–70 drum and one gold Mega Ball from a separate 1–24 drum, so the same number can appear in both.
The April 2025 revamp raised the ticket price to $5 and shrank the Mega Ball drum from 1–25 to 1–24. This generator follows the post-2025 rules, which put jackpot odds at C(70,5) × 24 = 1 in 290,472,336 — almost identical to Powerball's 1 in 292,201,338. Drawings are Tuesday and Friday nights, Eastern time.
Benford's law is a real statistical result: across data that spans several orders of magnitude — populations, stock prices, river lengths, ledger entries — leading digits are not uniform but follow P(d)=log₁₀(1+1/d). Auditors and election forensics teams use it to flag numbers that were made up rather than measured.
The algorithm picks one number at a time, renormalising Benford's probabilities across the leading digits that still have numbers left, choosing a leading digit with those odds, then picking uniformly inside that group. Below 70 there are eleven numbers starting with 1 but exactly one starting with 8 or 9, so those groups empty after a single pick and the renormalisation keeps the distribution on target.
Only the white balls feed the chart. The Mega Ball comes from a smaller 1–24 drum with a different leading-digit profile, so mixing them would make the comparison meaningless.
To be straight about it: the Mega Millions drawing is uniform by design and each drawing is independent, so no algorithm — Benford's included — improves your odds. What it does change is the shape of your picks, which matters only for how likely you are to share a jackpot.
It is the observation that in real-world numerical data the leading digit is not uniformly distributed: it follows P(d)=log₁₀(1+1/d), so 1 leads about 30.1% of the time and 9 only 4.6%. Simon Newcomb noticed it in 1881 and physicist Frank Benford formalised it in 1938. It is used today in forensic accounting and to screen election and scientific data.
It has been 1–24 since the April 2025 rule change, which also raised the ticket price to $5 and added a built-in multiplier. This generator uses the current 5/70 + 1/24 format.
1 in 290,472,336 — C(70,5) = 12,103,014 white-ball combinations times the 24 possible Mega Balls. That is marginally better than Powerball's 1 in 292,201,338.
No. The drawing machine is uniform and past results have no bearing on the next one. The reason to use an unusual pattern is that hand-picked tickets bunch up in 1–31 because of birthdays, so a jackpot on an ordinary-looking ticket is more likely to be shared.
Mega Millions draws 5 white balls from 1–70 plus a Mega Ball from 1–24 on Tuesdays and Fridays; Powerball draws 5 from 1–69 plus a Powerball from 1–26 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Jackpot odds are near-identical at roughly 1 in 290 million and 1 in 292 million.