[OC] Heatmap of “time since last appearance” for each number in French Loto draws (2019–2025)

Data: all official Loto France draws from 2019-01-01 to 2025-11-30.

Source: historical results from Française des Jeux (FDJ).

Each row is one ball number (1–49). Each column is a draw.

The color shows how many consecutive draws this number has been “missing” at that moment (time since last appearance).

You can see how “hot” and “cold” streaks appear naturally in a purely random process:

– some numbers stay cold for dozens of draws,

– others come back several times in a short period,

– but over the long run the distribution is fairly even.

This visualization is descriptive only – it doesn’t increase anyone’s chances of winning.

Lotteries are negative expectation games; the goal here is just to explore and visualize real-world randomness.