I guess my crappy raffle luck as a kid paid off. Learned young that putting hope in a gamble isn’t worth it.
Nowadays I have a fun little mantra to tell people in my circle: If I’m willing to make a bet, you might not want to take it. I’m not the gambling type. I probably know something.
If the jackpot is up in the ridiculous set for life amounts, I’ll drop ten bucks on a few tickets here or there. My thoughts doing so is this: if I lose ten bucks, then nothing really changes in my life, but if I’m truly lucky and hit that one in a quadrillion chance of actually winning the jackpot, then everything changes. I don’t ever expect to win, but I won’t miss the minimal amount of money I’m throwing in for my chance to. So why not bet on the long shot every now and again as long as losing doesn’t hurt me financially?
If you’re in the UK and you - or anyone you know - plays the lottery, look into Premium Bonds instead. You get the same excitement during the draw and the worst case scenario is you get your money back.
Yes, I know there are better investments, but Premium Bonds have some of the fun of the lottery without just pissing your cash away.
we did it in school it’s basic math from how many numbers how many do you need to guess correctly, they can arbitrarily set those numbers to always be more than the population.
IIRC in my country where the population is around 5 million the odds of winning the lottery was about 1 in 6,5 million and in the neighboring country with 10 million people it was around 1 in 13 million
You have more chance to play the lottery your whole life and never win a significant amount, than it is to win a significant amount once.
Since the lottery is a business, big part of all the ticket sales is used to run the business (and to generate profit). Only the rest is used to pay the winnings.
The prop for the WOPR was actually a refrigerator box that was painted black and had Christmas lights. It also still exists. It was auctioned off for several thousand dollars a few years ago.
I think that the fact that people don’t believe you when you tell them that 1 2 3 4 5 6 has the exact same chance of winning than any other combination shows how bad we are with numbers , 1 2 3 4 5 6 is seen as something with very low odds of happening that is thought about as something that will never happen, but say 4 8 15 16 23 42 is seen as something that could happen anytime.
If someone thinks about playing lottery just tell them to bet on ‘1 2 3 4 5 6’ (or whatever the number of numbers in your lottery). Once you realize this combination is as probable as any other the chances of winning seem a lot smaller.
That is true, but as a side note i discourage you from betting on that sequence as a lot of people that studied probability end up betting on that same sequence out of spite and if it actually comes out the winnings will be much lower than expected.
been meaning to do the math on this for a long time but never remember about it.
Turns out I saved $43,800 by not playing the local lottery every week since my first job.
potentially times that by seven because there seems to be a different lottery for every day of the week.
I'd like to check if my smartarse sequential number pick ever won in that time but finding the historical numbers is a bit more work than I could be bothered with right now.
Depending on how your local lottery system works you probably would have had some minor wins over the years.
I have a $5 ticket every week. My logic is that “I’m renting hope” every week theres a minuscule chance that it could be my last week at work ever. I see a house that I’ll never be able to afford and I think “Sure, if I win this week. Lol” as opposed to getting all shitty about wealth inequality.
Its not false hope, I’m aware that its stupidly unlikely but its not impossible. I dont think Ill ever win the jackpot but the idea that it could happen is worth $5 a week.
The idea that it could happen is false hope though, because you’re buying into the idea that the chance is worth $5. The chance is so small it might as well be zero. So you’re way over spending for a could that is practically a won’t.
There are some situations with some lotteries where the math works in your favor because of for instance rollover. But if you’re committed to $5 a week you’re not that lottery player.
If you were to put $5 in S&P 500 weekly for a decade it is far more likely that you’ll have a profit of a few thousand on top of the money that you did not spend on lottery tickets (because you still own the stock). That’s not really as radically marxist as my previous comment might make me seem, but for your personal wallet it’s way better.
In this economy if you want to become rich, the best thing is to start out rich. The next best thing is starting a company and pocketing the productivity of your employees. Back to that marxism thing again.
You are more likely to play your whole life and never win a significant amount, than you are winning once.
People who think they will get more out of it than they put in are delusional. Lottery is a business, only a small part of their earnings goes back into the pot.
I buy a lotto ticket when the Powerball gets ridiculous. Probably won’t win, but I definitely won’t if I don’t get a ticket. A few bucks every year is worth that improvement from zero to non-zero.
I’m fine with donating like $5 every couple years. Also no, more people buying Powerball tickets doesn’t reduce chances to win at all, it’s not a raffle. The only thing that decreases with more players is, potentially, the payout assuming multiple winners.
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