If your toddler has a 'Micheál' and 'Leo' in their friend group you might want to buy a lottery ticket

As a Fine Gael TD calls for an investigation into the National Lottery as no player has won the jackpot in almost six months, a statistician calculates that you're more likely to see a toddler starting crèche next year whose first two friends are called 'Micheál' and 'Leo'

As the National Lottery jackpot is €19,060,800 this weekend, UCC's School of Mathematical Sciences calculated some other likelihoods for us

What are the odds! or What are the chances of this happening?

We say it all the time — when we bump into an old friend; when the car breaks down on a busy day; when we catch a dropped cup before it hits the floor. 

But with life-changing amounts of money at stake here we had to get a bit more precise about this.  The Irish National Lottery top prize has been capped at its highest ever amount since September and it hasn't been won in nearly six months.

So what are the odds of winning the Irish jackpot?

We headed to University College Cork's School of Mathematical Sciences to get the low-down — and to see if we could get any info that might give us an edge!

Senior lecturer and head of statistics, Dr Michael Cronin, crunched some numbers for us. 

According to Dr Cronin, there are 10,737,573 possible combinations for the six winning Lotto numbers. But as a player has to play at least two lines, the odds of a two-line ticket winning the Lotto are 5,368,786 to one.

So to help us get that into perspective we got him to work on some other likely — or unlikely — scenarios for us.

The following are estimated to be more likely to occur:

· Dublin winning the Senior All-Ireland Football title for each of the next 17 years.

· Mayo winning the Senior All-Ireland Football title for each of the next seven years.

· Cork winning the Senior All-Ireland Hurling title for each of the next seven years.

· Ireland winning the next four UEFA Euros.

· A couple both sharing their birthday on February 29.

and you'll love this one

· A toddler starting crèche next year whose first two friends are called 'Micheál' and 'Leo'.

National Lottery

By the way, EuroMillions tickets must be purchased ahead of the 7.30pm cut-off time for sales this evening while the deadline for Lotto sales is at 7.45pm tomorrow evening.