Probability Of Winning The Lottery - Don't Waste Your Money

[jeffrey]

Everyone knows that the probability of winning the lottery is a pretty big long shot. How long, however, you probably never really thought about. Your actual odds of winning the lottery depend on where you play, but single state lotteries usually have odds of about 18 million to 1 while multiple state lotteries have odds as high as 120 million to 1.

If you have ever thought you'd win the lottery, you're not alone. About one out of every three people in the United States think that winning the lottery is the only way to become financially secure in their life. This is a frightening statistic when you sit down and consider what the above odds really mean.

It's time to take a long hard look at the chances of you winning the lottery. While winning the lottery may be something that you want, to show you your chances we'll take a look at a number of remote occurrences that you probably wouldn't like to have happen to you - and probably don't think will ever happen to you - but are still much more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery.

How about the classic odds of being struck by lightning? The actual probability of this happening varies from year to year, but as a good estimate, the National Safety Council says between 70 and 120 people a year die in the US by lightning - so let's take 100 as our base. With the US population being approximately 265 million people, that means that the chances of being killed by lightning are roughly 2,650,000 to 1. Not very likely. However you are still 6 to 45 times more likely to die from a lightning strike than you would be to win the lottery.




Now nobody really wants to die from flesh eating bacteria, and with odds at about 1 million to 1, the chances that you will die that way are pretty slim. Then again, you are 18 to 120 times more likely to die this way than to win the lottery.

What are the chances that if you're playing with a group of four that two of you will get a hole-in-one on the exact same hole? At 17 million to 1, they're better than the chances of you winning the lottery.

What about dieing from a snake bite or bee sting? It probably isn't a way that you have imagined that you would leave the earth. You're a whopping 180 to 1,200 times more likely to die from one of these incidents than win the lottery. That's because the probability of dieing from a snake bite or bee sting is about 100,000 to 1.

Now I know that you are not a bad person and you don't imagine finding yourself on death row for a crime you committed anytime soon. Still, it's a lot more likely that you will be legally executed than win the lottery. In fact, you are 30,000% to 200,000% more likely to die in a legal execution than to win the lottery.

Or If I told you that you were 450,000 to 3,000,000 times more likely to die in an asteroid collision in the year 2029 than to win the lottery, what would you think? Well, these are in fact the odds according to this report at space.com.

If none of the above has convinced you to stop playing the lottery, then I'll bring out my favorite lottery fact. If you drive 10 miles to purchase your lottery ticket, it's three to twenty times more likely for you to be killed in a car accident along the way than to win the jackpot.

[cheapbastard]

Here is a fact, that I use to show people how unlikely they are to win the lottery. I tell my friends when I play the lottery that I always pick the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 & 6. Their response is "there is no way that you can win with those numbers". "That will never happen". I have to explain to them that the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 are just as likely to come up as any other number combination they come up with.

Don't waste your money.

[marglo]

I have told my dh this but he still says someone will win ...it might possibly be him...and he has won smaller ($300-2000) a few times so he feel sure it's just a matter of time. :-)
He also says it is something he enjoys doing and he only spends about $3 a week.

[gavinmccallister]

I did some math, which I am not very good at(lol) Spending $3.00 a week comes out to $156.00 a year using 4 weeks in a month to make it easier, you would of made $6.12 interest @ 4.25%

[yaberacer]

The problem with this analysis is that it compares the probability of winning the lottery with the probability of a whole bunch of bad things happening to you. Who cares if the chances of winning the lottery are less than being hit by an asteroid? Most people don't want to be hit by an asteroid, but on the other hand most people think that winning the lottery would be very nice indeed. The probability of winning of the lottery if you buy one ticket is infinitesimal, but the probability of winning if you don't buy one is zero. I figure that a dollar or two a week buys me the pleasant feeling that perhaps I might be the lucky one - cheap entertainment by any measure. As to the fact that 1/3 of the population thinks that winning the lottery is their only chance to become financially secure, I'm surprised it's not more. This just reflects the fact that many people are just barely getting by, and their chances of becoming 'financially secure' are not much better than their chances of winning the lottery. However, if any people are out there spending a lot of money on the lottery, money that they need, or should be saving, STOP IT! Even if you buy a lot of tickets, your chances of winning are still infinitesimal.

[jIM_Ohio]

I rarely play the lottery, but when I do I always buy enough tickets to cover every single number.

Meaning if lottery is #s 1-54 with 6 numbers per ticket, I will get 9 tickets and make sure every number is used on one of the 9 tickets.

Sure 6-7 of the tickets will probably not have a number hit... but when doing this I have gotten 3 numbers on a ticket about 20 times and 4 numbers 3 times.

[GREENBACK]

I play occasionally in my SO's pool from work. Maybe 10 bucks a month. A pool of office players just hit the jackpot in the next county over from us so that really made me a little more hopeful. I'm certainly not playing with money I can't afford to lose so I think it's kind of "what if" fun. A better stat to look at might be the # of "winners" who end up broke within a short time of winning. Not sure of this number but have heard many bad stories.

A fellow worker actually matched 5 of 6 #'s the other night and only got $400. That had to suck.

I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood in the '70's and can recall the long lines of people who really didn't need to spend money on lottery tickets. Some of these folks were seniors and a lot were recieving gov't assistance. That's the real shame and It hasn't changed. The states took a once looked down upon street hustle and legitimized it in the name of education. I suppose that makes it ok. At least for the street game you could play with as little a dime back then. Ah, the good old days.