In lotto game 7/39, combination of 7 numbers are drawn at random.
Should we trust 'lotto experts' and their lotto advice? For example, should we pick 4 of the higher and 3 out of the lower numbers (they claim that combinations like this win more often), or not to pick consecutive numbers because they rarely occur?
Is data and from the past games (conclusion drawn out of it) relevant for the future ones?
My thoughts (or pitfalls): Is there any point in looking for "greater justice" in a game like lotto, since it should be designed to be completely random? I cannot see any reason why combination [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] would be less likely to be winning combination than, say [2,5,9,17,21,33,38] (or any other, for that matter). Same goes for consecutive numbers, is there a reason to believe that any other sub sequence (1,2,3) is less probable than some other, say (5,9,17)?
Lotteries are by definition, drawn at random, so there is an equal chance of each of your combinations match the actual drawn numbers.
As a result of this, higher numbers and lower numbers have an equal chance of occurring, so these 'lotto experts' are wrong. Even if a combination is more likely to occur in the short-term, there is an extremely likely chance close to $1$ that these will have been outweighed by other numbers in the long-term.
Hope this cleared some misconceptions about the definition and consequences of a random event. This misconception is also closely related to the gambler's fallacy, which I suggest you to look at.