355 million lottery ticket.
- Thread starter peilthetraveler
- Start date
Quote from ElCubano:
more people buy more chances of mega multiple winners...Imagine looking at those numbers the night before and thinking about the $355,000,000 only to find out 355 winners hit the same number...
>10,000 could pick the winning number if the winning combination happens to be a famous sequence (e.g. the above example from "Lost")
The payoff... that's whole idea, for me at least. The payoff gets big enough for me to basically throw away 5 or 10 bucks for a slim chance. The reason I don't play the $40m jackpot for $2 is the same as not playing $100 for a $300m one: too much money to throw away for too little return. Similar to buying DOTM options I guess.
Quote from TGregg:
It's funny to watch people who have no understanding of odds play the lotto. AIR the odds of picking the winning combo are something like 175 million to one. Take 27 coins and throw them up in the air. The odds of all of them being heads is about 134 million to 1. Easier than winning the lotto.
I once rolled six 6s in a row (on a six sided die). Such an amazing feat that it is still talked of to this day. Yet the odds on that? A paltry 46,656 to 1.
Well I would disagree a bit here in that the lottery is the ultimate in risk/reward ratio. Obviously anybody that puts any real hope in it is a fool but the dollar is worth the 1 minute of a little excitement in their boring lives.
They probably get a little more buzz from it than say buying a bagel.
I think there were probably a good number of tickets won with the Lost numbers. Good for $150, third prize, 3 of 5 +1.
I did a few quick calculations using the eighth prize (1 of 5 +1) as reference: for this drawing the % of third prize winners / eighth prize winners is ~1.7% vs ~1% for the preceding drawings. This is statistically significant I'd say.
Its not just about winning the big one. People know the odds are against them, but you get this euphoria when you buy the ticket that lasts until the drawing when you find out you lose. Its a nice feeling for those couple days until the drawing. I think alot of people buy just to dream a little. Pretty much everyone wins. The losers get a light high and do not really feel bad if they dont win, the winner gets millions, and the state also gets millions for schools. Its a win-win-win situation if you think about it.