A lottery in the Philippines where 433 people hit the jackpot has caused surprise and sparked a scrutiny.
This was the highest number of people to ever win the Grand Lotto top prize, according to local media.
The winning combination for last weekend’s 236 million peso ($4 million; £3.5 million) jackpot was a series of numbers all divisible by nine.
Philippine Senate Minority Leader Koko Pimentel has called for an investigation into the “suspicious” findings.
One expert told the BBC that the probability of having such a large group of winners is “1 followed by 1,224 zeros”.
“I don’t know a name for this number because it’s so large. The number of molecules in the known universe has 80 zeros,” said Guido David, a mathematics professor at the University of the Philippines.
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Participants in the Grand Lotto choose six numbers from 1 to 55. In order to win the jackpot, a player must match all six numbers with those drawn by the lottery operator.
“These lotto games are authorized by the Republic of the Philippines. Therefore, we must uphold and protect the integrity of these games of chance,” Mr Pimentel said when calling for an investigation into the lottery’s unusual outcome.
On Sunday, Melquiades Robles, general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), said there had been no irregularities, stressing that people in the Philippines tend to bet on number sequences.
“Many have stuck to their numbers. Not only is it good to be true to your wives and husbands, it’s good to be true to your numbers,” Mr Robles told a news conference.
The PCSO also shared photos and videos of people collecting their prize money at its office in the city of Mandaluyong, near the capital Manila.
“I’ve been betting on Pattern 9, Pattern 8, Pattern 7 and Pattern 6 for many years and I’m grateful I just won,” said one winner.
Terence Tao, a math professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the BBC that a pattern like this, which is a winning streak of numbers, is “rare for a single lottery”.
“But there are hundreds of lotteries around the world every day, and statistically it wouldn’t be surprising if one of those lotteries had an unusual pattern every few decades,” he said.
“It’s similar to how every poker hand would be unlikely to hit a straight flush, but when you look at hundreds of thousands of hands at once, it actually becomes quite likely that a straight flush will hit,” he added.
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