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The law of truly large numbers states that with a large enough sample of data, many odd "coincidences" are likely to happen.[1]

For example, you might be awestruck by someone who has won the lottery twice, believing that the odds of winning twice are astronomical. The New York Times published a report on a woman who twice won the New Jersey lottery, describing her odds as "1 in 17 trillion." But Purdue University statisticians Stephen Samuels and George McCabe assessed the odds of winning the lottery twice to be around 1 in 30 over a four-month period and better than even over a seven-year period. Why? Players buy numerous tickets every week since they don't buy one ticket for each of the two lotteries (Diaconis and Mosteller).

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