If obviously we have lottery winners every few months or so and never in recorded history, as it is my understanding has any human died of and asteroid, then how is it statistically more likely to die in an asteroid apocalypse than win the lottery?
It might help if people know the source of this statement, which I assume is here:
Seems like they are saying IF a big asteroid hits, that’s your odds of dying. But clearly it would depend on the size of the asteroid.
I’m not sure that the statement is true. For one thing, you’d have to define what you mean by “lottery winners.”
But let’s say that there’s a dino-killer asteroid impact every 50 million years. If it hit today and wiped out the human race, that would kill 7 billion people, so we could conclude that the expected average asteroid deaths per year is 140 people (7 billion / 50 million). If there are fewer than 140 expected average lottery winners, then you’re more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win the lottery.
This is grossly oversimplified in many ways, of course, but it’s the basic strategy you’d use to build the argument.
I guess I’m looking at it in an entirely unhypothetical way. Of all recorded history no one has died from an asteroid while at the same time there have been probably thousands of powerball winners (or similar lotteries). That alone would say that any persons chance of winning the lottery are better than any persons chance of dying by asteroid strike. lottery wins = frequent. Asteroid deaths = never in recorded history.
At least as important, you have to define “apocalyptic asteroid strike”.
I would argue that apocalyptic means total annihilation of mankind.
The article i linked above makes a similar claim that on average there are 91 asteroid deaths per year. I assume they are figuring a potential asteroid strike every 100 million years to get that figure. I also have to assume they are figuring worldwide human population at a constant instead of the reality which is that homo sapiens evolved roughly 160,000 years ago with short life expectancies. As well as the fact that we haven’t always had a world population of 7 billion. In fact as of 200 years ago the world population was 1/7th that. In 200 more years it could be twice that. Statistically would twice the population make an asteroid apocalypse more likely?
I realize the wording of the question can mean completely different results in statistics. Such as the statistical likelihood of the same number being drawn twice in a row in the lottery is astronomically unlikely. But at the same time, per game it is statistically just as likely to happen than any other number since the numbers have no memory of the previous game.
I don’t think the statement is true nor do i believe the statistics.
But my post already shows how this line of thinking is wrong. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet is completely irrelevant. As long as we know the odds of it happening, we can calculate the expected number of deaths per year. Using my very simplified method, that’s 140 people per year on average.
Maybe I can phrase it differently…
If 100 people win the lottery every year, then after 50 million years, we’ll have 5 billion winners. (Assuming no asteroids cause mass extinctions first).
If 7 billion people die every time an asteroid hits the Earth with one asteroid every 50 million years, then after 50 million years, we’ll have 7 billion deaths.
Thus, by the end of the 50 million years, we expect that more people will be dead by asteroid than rich by lottery. For purposes of the math we don’t really care which year all these people die in; we just know it’ll happen eventually.
Although there’s no recorded cases of people being killed by being struck by meteors, there were two cases of people being struck and injured by them. There were cases where animals have been killed by them. There was a case where a car was struck by one.
I do understand what your saying. i do think i was thinking about it wrong, or better yet the stat itself is misleading. This stat only even makes sense when based off population. if the stat is based instead off any other population number or better yet counts mankind as a single unit then the odds suddenly become much different. 1 apocalyptic asteroid event every 100,000,000 years or .0000007 apocalyptic events every year. When that is compared to the number of lottery winners per year i think that is a more accurate statistic.
I imagine that was listed on the insurance claim as “damage by falling rock”.
Well, but if you look at it right:
An apocalyptic asteroid strike would, by definition, kill everybody, wouldn’t it? (or arguably, all but 110,000 people.) So, in the event of an apocalyptic asteroid strike, you’ve clearly got a 100% (or as near as makes no difference) chance of dying .
In the event of a Megamillions drawing, for which you have purchased a ticket, you have a 0.000000003863% chance of winning the full jackpot. (Cite: Mega Millions Odds because I’m much too lazy to do the math myself.)
So, as you can see, the chances are much better with the asteroid. . . er . . . or something.
That is interesting. I guess i was assuming any lottery winner rather than myself in particular winning the lottery. Statistics are tricky.
I think the two linked articles are making a mistake in that they’re comparing the chances of being killed by an asteroid in an average lifetime with the chances of a single lottery ticket winning. It seems like comparing your lifetime chances of both would be a better comparison.
The article linked at post #2 says your lifetime chances of being killed by an asteroid are 1 in 700,000. The odds of winning the grand powerball prize is 1 in 175,223,510. So figuring an average life expectancy of about 80 if you bought a ticket every week (once you turn 18 of course, so 62 years) you’d play 3224 times which would make the chance of winning in your lifetime about 1 in 54,000.
Don’t forget you cannot win if you do not play. The pool of potential lottery winners is a whole lot smaller than the pool of potential asteroid apocalypse victims.
The number of lottery winners in the world is certainly way more than 140; Canada alone, based on my back of the envelope calculations, hands out more than 140 lottery prizes every year of at least one million dollars. The worldwide total is surely many times that.
And of course, it depends how much you play. Every lotto 6/49 ticket I buy confers about a 1 in 4.6 million chance of winning millions (49 pick 6, times three because you get three sets of numbers.). It draws 104 times per year, making my chances about 1 in 45,000, which beats the asteroid odds.
:mad: Why is it only the good things in life are optional?!?
How do you figure your chances move to 1 in 54000 if you buy a single ticket every week? Each individual ticket still only gives you a 1 in 175 million chance. Your lifetime odds of 1 ticket per game still never net you any better odds than that.
Basic statistics. Although the odds of any one ticket winning its game are as you said, the potential of the event occurring is increased the more you play. Let me explain how it works using probabilities you’re more familiar with.
The odds of a coin flip are 50/50. No matter how many times you flip it, the odds stay the same, and I’m assuming you’re thinking that I’m proving myself wrong here. But while the odds of the individual flip stay the same, if you look at a series of flips, the chances of getting a given result at some point in the series increase as it gets larger. If you only care about it coming up heads once in all the flips, then more flips equals a higher probability- it’s possible to flip a coin ten times and not come up heads, but it’s unlikely. Flip it a hundred times, and getting tails every single time usually means something is wrong with the coin or the person flipping it.
So let’s go to a die being rolled, standard six sided cube. Getting a six on a single roll is improbable. Getting a six on the one hundredth roll is equally improbable. But getting at least one six, somewhere in a hundred rolls? VERY probable. Move to a deck of playing cards, without jokers. Drawing a specific card, like the ace of spades, is incredibly unlikely, 1 in 52. If we use a new deck each time, it’s always the same probability, the odds of any draw don’t improve- just like drawing against a new set of numbers each week in the lottery. But eventually, if you draw one card from a whole bunch of decks, the odds of having drawn the ace of spades at least once keep going up, and eventually it will become almost certain that you will have drawn it at least once.
Playing the lottery each week doesn’t mean that the odds of the final ticket someone buys the week they die is special and has a 1 in 54,000 chance, it’s still at the one in 175 million odds. But the odds that one of the tickets bought, over all those years, could have won it’s drawing are… well, still really improbable, but more reasonable than before.
Trucelt writes:
> An apocalyptic asteroid strike would, by definition, kill everybody, wouldn’t it? (or
> arguably, all but 110,000 people.)
I assume you mean all but 144,000 people (since there are religious groups that believe something like that).
I have personally known two people who won big money on lotteries, one of whom won multiple millions (and didn’t piss it all away, contrary to the cliché).
Since no people ever have been killed by asteroids, and I have strong evidence that ordinary people do indeed win lotteries on a regular basis, I’m going to say you can keep your bogus statistical arguments and I’ll keep on buying the occasional lottery ticket.