Derren Brown to predict national lottery numbers

[Black_Apalachi]

He's an entertainer, an illusionist, a magician. When he's expaining something its not necessarily how he did it. Rather its simply an explination to make the trick sound more believable and make the person feel more comfortable with the plausibility of it actually being able to happen. He didn't study lottery tickets for a year, and then make an educated guess. Thats just silly. Its a tRiCk. mAgIk.

Yeah exactly.

[FlyingJesus]

He used the same method he did last year if you saw his programme where he was at the races. He's spent a year of his life looking at every single lotto draw and seeing the probability of the numbers, then making a formula - essentially it was those numbers' turn tonight. Hard to explain but he did it last year.

If it's the same as his racecourse programme, which it looks like it is, he uses maths to work out a formula based on probability using all the past results. There's more to it, but it's complicated.

The probability of any lottery result is exactly the same as any other. It is never a number's "turn" because each ball has a 1/49 chance, then 1/48 then 1/47 etc as more come out - and that does not ever change. Magic is a more believable answer than this

[Xtina]

I'm just curious to see how he did it on friday...

[Jackk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHZ2mQczkcg

for anyone who hasnt seen it..

[Tintinnabulate]

Will he tell us how he did his tricks on "Derren Brown The Gathering" which was on C4 tonight?

[Sammeth.]

Will he tell us how he did his tricks on "Derren Brown The Gathering" which was on C4 tonight?

I remember watching that a year or so ago, I think it was a repeat. He looked a littler podgier.

[Black_Apalachi]

Will he tell us how he did his tricks on "Derren Brown The Gathering" which was on C4 tonight?

No, that was a repeat of a previous thing from a while ago (I think, even though I watched it for the first time tonight). He is to reveal the Lottery event on Friday.

During The Gathering, did anyone else notice various words flash up in the background of the stage for a split second throughout the show?

[Tintinnabulate]

No, that was a repeat of a previous thing from a while ago (I think, even though I watched it for the first time tonight). He is to reveal the Lottery event on Friday.

During The Gathering, did anyone else notice various words flash up in the background of the stage for a split second throughout the show?

This is what it says on Wikipedia.

Furthermore, the word "forget" was intermittently flashed very briefly on the backdrop throughout the performance.

[Black_Apalachi]

Ahhhh very good .

I love how he corrects himself and often pretends to make mistakes.

[Neversoft]

I think it's similar to this trick on Don't Miss A Trick, where they have a split screen, one with live footage the other with recorded. When Brown was standing by the television, they shew a recorded image of the blank balls, changed them to the correct numbers while we were watching the recorded blank balls, and then ended the split screen, showing live footage of the changed numbers.

Derren is better than some camera trickery, and isn't the show explaining how he did it on friday an hour long? He's not going to spend an hour explaining what you just did in one paragraph. He also said how he's been planning and preparing the prediction for a year. It doesn't take a year to learn how to mix pre-recorded footage with a live broadcast.