Posted on 08/07/2011 7:30:35 PM PDT by BunnySlippers
I’d rather be lucky than smart, but there are exceptions to every rule.
Large jackpots don’t improve your chance of winning, and because they draw more contestants they increase your chances of having to split the pot if you do buck the astronomical odds and win.
Most lotteries use multiple ball sets and multiple machines.
There’s a difference between scratcher tickets and coin flips though. Coin flips are independent events, what’s happened in the past has no impact on the future. Scratcher tickets are a predetermined quantity randomly sorted, they put out so many winners of each value and bury them among so many losers. It’s more like dealing with a deck of cards, if you flip 9 cards out a deck without putting them back if all of them are black your odds that #10 will be black have been greatly reduced.
Thank you!
They do increase the risk/benefit ratio.
Spending $1 for a one in 200-million chance to win a million bucks is mathematically retarded.
Spending $1 for a one in 200-million chance to win a 400-million bucks is a reasonable mathematical proposition.
Either way you probably aren't going to win, but at least it's not a mathematically retarded thing to do when the jackpot is high.
It’s still $1 for an infinitesimal chance of winning. The size of the prize doesn’t increase chances of winning so the risk benefit ratio remains the same, you’re still blowing $1 on a “chance” that statistics say you will not win. How much money you’re not going to win doesn’t change the fact that you’re not going to win. It’s mathematically retarded regardless of the size of the prize because you of the strong odds against you winning, the risk side remains the same and the benefit side barely nudges from 0 because of the odds against you.
If you're blowing hundreds of dollars a week on gambling, that's one thing.
If you're blowing $3 per year on the lottery by buying a single ticket when its over $200,000,000, that's quite another.
Somebody PROBABLY will eventually win, but there’s no guarantee it will actually happen, not unless you get a bunch of people together and organize the buys to cover every single possibility, that’s the only time you know for sure there will be a winner.
It’s your money, don’t care what you do with it, I’m simply pointing out that your logic is flawed. Because of the odds against winning the cost/ benefit ratio stays 1:0 basically throughout. Yeah if you carry out to a whole bunch of digits you’ll eventually get to a 1, and maybe if the amount to be won is high enough that 1 might change to a 2, might even move in 1 or 2 digits. But for all practical purposes even if the prize amount is the national debt your cost benefit is still 1:0 because of the minuscule odds.
If you must play do it for entertainment. Spending a buck to dream a little is a pretty good entertainment expense. Just don’t play around with cost/ benefit ratios like it’s an investment or even gambling, because the math you’re gonna lose.
That's the sucker line they use here in advertising the Indiana lottery:
"Somebody's gonna win, it may as well be you"
So somebody who spends $3 a year on the lottery is sick, eh?
No, not at all.
My Dad (RIP) who was the smartest and most practical guy I ever knew, played a buck a week. He’d buy his ticket at the liquor store, LOL.
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