What 340,288 Drawn 4D Numbers Say About the Systems

Every number has been drawn

All 10,000 numbers from 0000 to 9999 have appeared at least once. The average is 34.0 appearances each. The most drawn is 1024 at 63, the least drawn 4854 at 16. In 41 years, not one number has been missed and not one has run away with it.

Is the spread bigger than chance?

This is the question behind every hot-number system: if some numbers really were favoured, the counts would be spread wider than random draws allow. For counts like these, randomness produces a standard deviation equal to the square root of the mean — 5.83 here. The spread we actually measure is 5.74.

Those two numbers are the same to within a few per cent. The variation between numbers is the variation chance creates. There is nothing left over for a system to work on.

The shapes people avoid, and the ones they chase

Two beliefs run opposite ways: that the operators keep back the tidy numbers because too many people buy them, and that dates come up more often than they should. Both are testable.

The last column is how far each group sits from the overall average, measured in standard errors. Anything inside about two is what you would get by shuffling the numbers at random. Every group here is well inside it, which means neither belief survives the record: the operators are not holding back 8888, and dates are not favoured.

The longest a number has stayed away

These are the numbers that have gone longest without appearing anywhere:

We publish this because it is interesting, not because it is useful. A number that has not come up for years is not owed anything: the machine has no memory of it, and its chance in the next draw is the same 1 in 10,000 per slot it has always been. If long absences meant a number was due, the counts in the table above would not match chance as closely as they do.

So does any system work?

Nothing in 16,156 draws suggests one does. Every number has come up, they have come up about equally often, the shapes people believe in are drawn at the ordinary rate, and the variation between numbers is the variation randomness makes. A system can change which numbers you buy; it cannot change what any of them is worth.

What is worth knowing is the arithmetic that does not change: what a ringgit returns on each bet type, and what the prizes actually pay. Those are on the payout calculator, and the frequency tables this page draws on are on the 4D statistics page.

Frequently asked questions

Are some 4D numbers luckier than others?

No. Across 340,288 drawn numbers, every one from 0000 to 9999 has appeared, averaging 34.0 times each, and the spread between them matches what random draws produce (5.74 against 5.83 expected).

Do 4D operators avoid numbers like 8888?

The record says no. The ten four-of-a-kind numbers have been drawn an average of 34.40 times against an overall average of 34.0 — a difference well inside normal variation.

Are date numbers like 2512 drawn more often?

No. The 372 numbers that read as a date average 34.07 draws, against 34.0 overall. They are bought more often than other numbers, but they are not drawn more often.

If a number has not appeared for years, is it due?

No. Each draw is independent and the machine has no record of what it did before. A long absence is a fact about the past, not a claim on the future.

Where does this data come from?

Our own archive of 16,156 draws from Magnum, Da Ma Cai and Sports Toto, starting April 1985, kept current with every draw.