Playing the lottery

[feh]

How is that possible. Each time you play your still competing against a very large number of people for the Powerball. Millions of people that is.

No, you're not competing against anybody. Your chances of winning the jackpot for a particular drawing are exactly the same, whether there was 1 other ticket sold or 10 million.

[bjl584]

No, you're not competing against anybody. Your chances of winning the jackpot for a particular drawing are exactly the same, whether there was 1 other ticket sold or 10 million.

Correct. Your only competition is the order that the little plastic balls spit out of the machine. How many tickets are sold is irrelevant. The odds are always the same.

[KTP]

Um, I think the odds are actually worse than this. Every lottery drawing is a separate event so your odds with a $50 purchase each time are the same everytime (about 1 in 3 million). Your odds do not improve with repeated trials.

I may have miscalculated my figures, but I was not refering to the odds of winning a particular lottery event, but rather the overall odds of winning one of the lottery jackpots over a 30 year period. Or rather look at it like this: You put $50 a week in a jar for 30 years. At the end of the 30 years you go out and buy 78,000 $1 lottery tickets for a game with the odds of winning the jackpot set to 1:146,000,000. Thus your odds of winning the jackpot are 78,000:146,000,000 which is 1:1872

If you buy the $50 of tickets and play each week instead of playing the lump sum at the end of 30 years there would be additional calculations, such as what do you do with a small win of 3, 4, or 5 numbers. Do you get to buy more tickets with that money?

[disneysteve]

I may have miscalculated my figures, but I was not refering to the odds of winning a particular lottery event, but rather the overall odds of winning one of the lottery jackpots over a 30 year period. Or rather look at it like this: You put $50 a week in a jar for 30 years. At the end of the 30 years you go out and buy 78,000 $1 lottery tickets for a game with the odds of winning the jackpot set to 1:146,000,000. Thus your odds of winning the jackpot are 78,000:146,000,000 which is 1:1872

Buying 78,000 tickets to one drawing is not the same as buying 50 tickets to 1,560 drawings. Each drawing is an independent event so the fact that you played last week and the week before and the week before that in no way alters or improves your odds of winning this week.

[Slug]

Buying 78,000 tickets to one drawing is not the same as buying 50 tickets to 1,560 drawings. Each drawing is an independent event so the fact that you played last week and the week before and the week before that in no way alters or improves your odds of winning this week.

Yes, that was what I was trying to convery earlier, "Every lottery drawing is a separate event so your odds with a $50 purchase each time are the same everytime (about 1 in 3 million). Your odds do not improve with repeated trials."

I should note that in smaller state level lotteries where you have scratch-off games with a limited number of tickets, there have been occassions where certain people pooled their funds to purchase a huge sum of the available tickets in order to achieve an outsized jackpot. I think the lottery commissions are onto this strategy at this point though so such opportunities would be rare. See Lotto 6/36: 1988–92 here for one example of what I mean.

[KTP]

Buying 78,000 tickets to one drawing is not the same as buying 50 tickets to 1,560 drawings. Each drawing is an independent event so the fact that you played last week and the week before and the week before that in no way alters or improves your odds of winning this week.

I said overall odds for the 30 year time period.

Maybe this will help.

I flip a coin 10 times. I have a 50% chance each time of getting tails.

For the overall odds of getting tails at least one time in the 10 flips, it is much greater than 50%. I think it is actually 100%*(2^10 - 1)/(2^10) which would be about a 99.9023% chance of getting at least one tails.

My math may be off, but I think this is right.

[Slug]

% chance of winning when playing once with $78000(50*1560) = 0.053385%
% chance of winning when playing 1560 times with $50 = 0.053371%

Slight advantage to pooling. Hope my math is good.

[briandownie]

There's just one thing about buying lottery tickets that I know for sure.

You can't win if you don't buy a ticket.

Brian

[Snodog]

You may want to try your luck at this lottery simulator.

Most times I lost almost all my money over 10 years but twice I had 4 balls + the mega ball so overall I'm about even.

[littleroc02us]

No, you're not competing against anybody. Your chances of winning the jackpot for a particular drawing are exactly the same, whether there was 1 other ticket sold or 10 million.

The point is that it's very difficult to win and I don't know anybody that has won the powerball. If that is the only way people feel they can win with money, my thread already spoke about how that is a near impossible feat, because they can by putting away $50 dollars a week for 30 years they can become well off and live a good retirement. The quick fix most likely never happens, but sacrifice and discipline can get you there if your patient.

[ActYourWage]

There's just one thing about buying lottery tickets that I know for sure.

You can't win if you don't buy a ticket.

Brian

There is one other thing - if you don't buy, you don't waste your money.

[disneysteve]

There is one other thing - if you don't buy, you don't waste your money.

Waste is such a very subjective term. What is waste to one person might not be considered waste to another. When I mention that we went to the casino recently, some people I know will say they can't afford to waste their money on gambling. These same people, however, may drive a leased car or have a $150/month cable TV bill or order out for lunch every day or go to the movies every weekend or do a dozen other things that my wife and I would consider wasteful.

To us, the casino isn't a waste at all. We both really enjoy going. It is a rare opportunity for the two of us to spend some time together out of the house and without our daughter. We usually gamble for an hour or two, have lunch or dinner together, walk around the area (depending on which casino we go to) and just overall have a nice few hours. It is fun. It is relaxing. And most importantly, we can afford what we spend and still take care of all of our financial obligations. Of course, some days we lose and some days we win. I know over the long term it costs us money, but really not so much and we count it as our entertainment budget.

I'd say the same for the lottery. When the person buying tickets is on welfare and food stamps, they shouldn't be buying tickets. But when they are financially stable and choose to spend a few discretionary dollars on dreams, I see nothing wrong with that.

[littleroc02us]

I'd say the same for the lottery. When the person buying tickets is on welfare and food stamps, they shouldn't be buying tickets. But when they are financially stable and choose to spend a few discretionary dollars on dreams, I see nothing wrong with that.

I agree with the statement above. Basically, there is a slight difference for the person who feels that the lottery is the only way anybody becomes rich stereotype. It's misguided and uneducated when you do the math vs. the odds. When I go out to lunch and spend my disposable income on it that is what I consider entertainment. When someone who lives paycheck to paycheck plays the lottery due to lost hope and the belief that it's the only way then that is where the problem is. It's to bad there isn't a way to educate these people to make better decisions. When I was in highschool no one ever taught me how to manage money and use credit cards. Then I was thrown out into the real world and had to fail before I could succeed. That process worked for me, but I wish I would have listened to my father who was right the whole time. Save and balance your checkbook and live within your means. It was right there in front of me the whole time, but I didn't listen to him. If society were more educated with financial mathematics, a lot of problems could be fixed. The lottery isn't the answer.
The lottery for someone who is doing well and living within their means can be entertainment and if they do win great, but if they don't then that's just money spent on entertainment, just like going to a movie or eating out at a restaurant. Same thing.

[briandownie]

There is a lot of talk here about lottery purchases being a form of "poor man" tax, wasted money and all other forms of negativity.

Do you know what is done with lottery proceeds?

In many places, and yes there are exceptions, lottery proceeds are used for education, health care, community programs like arenas, soccer fields and other sports related activities, boy's and girl's clubs just to name a few. I recently purchased $125 worth of Lottery tickets to support a children's hospital.

So Lottery tickets not only give people hope and dreams the money is often used for very worthy and needy causes and is more of a charitable donation than it is a tax. Before you reply about all the taxes you may already be paying remember that buying lottery tickets is optional at the discretion of the buyer and that many charities would fall short of their financial requirements without the proceeds from lottery ticket sales.

If you're not in favor of buying lottery tickets you can always make a donation to a worthy charity of your choice.

Brian

[KTP]

There is a lot of talk here about lottery purchases being a form of "poor man" tax, wasted money and all other forms of negativity.

Do you know what is done with lottery proceeds?

In many places, and yes there are exceptions, lottery proceeds are used for education, health care, community programs like arenas, soccer fields and other sports related activities, boy's and girl's clubs just to name a few. I recently purchased $125 worth of Lottery tickets to support a children's hospital.

So Lottery tickets not only give people hope and dreams the money is often used for very worthy and needy causes and is more of a charitable donation than it is a tax. Before you reply about all the taxes you may already be paying remember that buying lottery tickets is optional at the discretion of the buyer and that many charities would fall short of their financial requirements without the proceeds from lottery ticket sales.

If you're not in favor of buying lottery tickets you can always make a donation to a worthy charity of your choice.

Brian

Actually there is some truth to this. If you take as a given that your state needs money (and most do now due to underfunded pensions and other mess), then if you don't buy a lottery ticket, they are just going to get that $1 from you in another manner (higher property taxes, raise sales tax, etc.).