So let’s posit a lottery draw with just seven balls, of which the state picks three as the jackpot combination. There are thirty-five possible jackpot combos, corresponding to the thirty-five different ways that three numbers can be chosen from the set 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. (Mathematicians like to say, for short, “7 choose 3 is 35.”)
