Just Bought My 3 Tix For Wednesday's $400mm Powerball
- Thread starter RutgersRaRa
- Start date
I had CFO who described the lottery as being for the statistically challenged. Nonetheless I continue to buy tickets.
My motto is one for fun. There is a certain amount of excitement you get putting the ticket under the scanner and hoping to win a few bucks. Worth a buck to me a week, but thinking you buy 10 powerball tickets and that improves your odds to any real degree, is starting to get a little crazy.
People who point that out as though they're smart are personality challenged. Feel free to share that with your former CEO at your next get-together. :-)
There's really no defining her, but this is a start. Kudos to whoever brought the subject up.
Gotcha - didn't want to piss anyone off, unprovoked. With regard to the math it's actually really simple: buying 2 tix vs. 1 gives you twice as much of a chance of winning. The denominator, whether it's 292 million tix sold or 4 tix sold is immaterial with regard to the comparison of 1 to 2 tix bought and the relative chance of winning
The "difference" the denominator makes is in the absolute chance of winning. Look at it this way:
1 in 4 is a 25% chance of winning
2 in 4 is a 50% chance of winning, which is twice as much as 1 in 4. 50% is far larger than 25% from an absolute perspective
1 in 250 million is a 0.00000000004% chance of winning (using 250MM to make the math easier)
2 in 250 million is a 0.00000000008% chance of winning, which is twice as much as 1 in 250 million, but, obviously, the absolute chance of winning in either case is vanishingly small. Which is why it's a dumb thing to do.
Even from an "expected outcome" perspective it's way worse than any casino game where you normally are ~49% likely to win your money back, since the house is ~51% to win (they have to have an edge to even play), i.e., you put in $1 and you should expect to get $0.98 back, which is why it takes quite a while to lose - which is why it's "fun" for most.
For Powerball, if it's a 1 in 292MM chance to win and a ticket costs $2, then you'd need to own 146MM tickets (half of the total) to have a 50% chance of winning the $450MM payout or if put like above, put in $292MM to get back $225MM (50% chance of winning $450MM), which is $0.77 per $1 put in. But, in fact it's a lot worse than that, after taxes, i.e., maybe half that or $0.34 per $1.
I'm sure skillet or one of the stats guys can check my math, but I think it's right.
I dusted off my wallet and pulled out 2 faded $1 bills to get myself a chance to help refurbish the RAC.
Math guys need to confirm here, but if you can technically say buying 2 powerball tickets when the odds are 292 million to one give you twice the odds, this is what drives me crazy, people say that they buy 2 or more for this reason, they have twice the odds of winning. While this may be technically true as you pointed out (.000000000004 vs .000000000008) the odds are so infinitesimally small, I can't see how any reasonable person actually thinks buying more than one ticket really improves there odds.
Like I said, many people see buying any ticket as a waste. I buy one a week for fun, but I don't kid myself that buying multiple tickets does anything but cost me more money.
If you bought your first ticket at Welsh Farms and your second ticket at Wawa and the second ticket wins what does that say about your odds?
Wait a second. If I buy one ticket, my odds are basically X, right? So it stands to reason that if I buy two tickets, my odds are X*2 meaning I've doubled my chance to win. Which is the same as saying that I've cut my chances of losing in half.
That's huge.
:popcorn:
Mildone, its not huge my friend. Each ticket you buy with a different number is 292 million to one odds. The odds of winning are infinitesimally small for either ticket. You are not HUGELY improving your odds of winning by buying 2 tickets.
Again, mathematicians, please explain.
The probability increases by a factor of 2 when buying twice the number of tickets, which is a 100% increase in the likelihood of winning, but which is still a very low probability of winning. Sometimes people confuse the absolute probability with the increased probability; the latter seems impressive, but when put in terms of the former, it isn't.
Stop introducing mathematical reality into my dream of easy money dammit! I figure if 1 ticket is good, and 2 tickets is twice as good, then 4 tickets almost makes it a near certainty that I'll win.
I'm going yacht hunting tomorrow.
Oh I understand probability alright. I'm probably not going to buy a ticket which means I'm probably as likely to probably win as you probably are.
Sorry, buy 10, sounds like a guarantee you'll win.
Oh, here is your Yacht. Will look good with the BLock R on the SIde.
The admiral Xforce 145.
That is a nice one. But I'm more of a sailing yacht guy.Sorry, buy 10, sounds like a guarantee you'll win.
Oh, here is your Yacht. Will look good with the BLock R on the SIde.
The admiral Xforce 145.
Wait a minute. I'm thinking small. I'll shop for that one and a 150' sailing yacht.
Thought I answered this a few days ago. You're doubling your relative probability of winning, but your absolute probability of winning in either case is still nearly zero, as it's almost like 2 x 0 still, i.e., it's twice a tiny, tiny, tiny number (2/292MM vs. 1/292MM). Carry on...
I like my math better. And the end zone nearer the bubble is too twelve yards deep. I can tell.
You keep asking math people to explain. And people keep explaining that mathematically, buying 2 tickets doubles your odds of winning versus buying 1 ticket. Buying 1000 tickets gives you 1000 times the chance of winning.
But you aren't accepting the mathematical answer, because you are looking at this emotionally. You want a psychological answer.
The odds of winning are so small that most people don't buy lottery tickets with the expectation of winning. They buy lottery tickets for the emotional lift they get from buying a ticket. People buy lottery tickets and get some joy or excitement from thinking that they might win and thinking about what they would do with the money. You get that joy from buying 1 ticket. You don't get 1000 times that joy from buying 1000 tickets, even though you've improved your mathematical odds 1000-fold.
Exactly, we have 54 in the pool, I feel I have to put in whether I want to
or not. we have 54 times $5 apiece.
