Anglophone and Nordic Europe
Thirteen is the West’s designated unlucky number, feared firmly enough that buildings skip the floor and the fear has its own name: triskaidekaphobia.
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Reading the draws and working out what chance predicts.
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Reading the draws and working out what chance predicts.
Anglophone and Nordic Europe
Thirteen is the West’s designated unlucky number, feared firmly enough that buildings skip the floor and the fear has its own name: triskaidekaphobia.
Spain
In Spanish lottery tradition thirteen is favoured rather than feared — the same integer, the opposite folklore, which is the cleanest available proof that the meaning was never in the number.
Naples
The Smorfia gives thirteen to Saint Anthony.
Smorfia napoletanaSant'AntonioSaint Anthony
Cultural interest — does not change your odds.
What the machines actually did with 13, across every lottery this site holds a long record for.
Across 5 lotteries that hold a 13, its average deviation from expectation is −0.48σ. Statistically ordinary, everywhere.
The one thing a belief about a number can measurably do is change how many people play it — and a jackpot shared more ways is worth less to each winner. That is the only real consequence, and it is arithmetic rather than folklore.