I know someone already explained the odds to you, but are you fucking stupid? Yes, the odds to win the big prize are astronomically high. But winning any prize? That’s about 1 in 5.
Here watch this…
In January I bought a $1 scratcher and won $10 on it. I proceeded to claim my money and kept $5 and spent $5 on more tickets. I won $8 on those tickets. I did this 50/50 split of keeping and spending over the next several weeks and all told I believe I ended up with $40 profit. All from a $1 scratcher.
In the weeks since I think I’ve come out roughly even in my playing. Maybe I’ve lost a few dollars here and there. But I’d say I’m well in the black for the year.
You have got to be the most stupid person (at least in this respect) to ever grace these boards. I hope you take that as constructive criticism rather than clamming up in a shell and throwing out ignorance like you already have.
You really, really, really, really, need to take a basic course in probability and statistics. Any of them at all should be fine since you suck so bad at it that this isn’t affecting just your lottery life but almost certainly your life in any business, banking, and investments. Trust me, your life is really impaired by this type of statement and you don’t even know it.
Your post here makes you sound like the biggest denier we have had here in a while. I honestly don’t know wrong with you. It could be that you are just stupid in which case I would have some measure of sympathy. It is more likely that you are deluding yourself into being stupid in which case I don’t.
Casinos and even worse, lottery tickets take in a certain amount of money and then pay out a certain percentage of that money as a “prize” over the long term (hint: that prize is always less than 100%)
There are two ways that you could beat the lottery theoretically. You could play less than 10 times in your life and come out a ahead or you could be a long-time gambler and hit a massive jackpot more than you ever paid it.
You cannot beat the lottery paying in small amounts of money over time and winning small amounts. No one can: ever, ever, ever. That is how they make money.
My qualifications: Teaching statistics in the Ivy League (Dartmouth).
Please seek help and do not ever post this kind of ignorant shit because you seem more ignorant than a flat-earther mated with a creationist. The only redemption you can seek is to be humble and learn.
I should add that much of the public is as ignorant as ** Justin_Bailey**. It just really upset me that a post like that would be coming from a Doper with over 1,000 posts. I hope that ** Justin_Bailey** asks for help on this board on understanding prob/stat questions because something has gone horribly wrong and his post smacked of ignorance at so many levels that I hoped that someone would never make it that far with such ignorance.
Please ask for help on this topic Justin_Bailey because I have a feeling that you just don’t know what you don’t know on this topic and it is going to be like revealing evolution to a 5th grader to a child that was brought up under creationism. This type of thing pops up all over and I wouldn’t want anyone to be that ignorant of prob/stat. It could have a big impact on your life.
Not that I would necessarily describe it as idiocy, but I do agree. When there’s a big jackpot, I buy a ticket–one. It’s a buck that lets me daydream, and it’s worth a dollar to me. Two dollars would not significantly increase my chances, while doubling the cost of my daydreams. No way, man.
When the guy behind the counter asks me how many, and I say one, I generally get a look that seems to say, “One? How the hell you gonna win only buying one?”
I’ve heard people make claims like Justin, and I think they actually believe them. My theory is that they tend to play amounts they don’t miss too much over the course of time, then in their memories, they undervalue the amounts they lost (since it doesn’t cause a lot of “pain” in any given instance) and overvalue the wins, which create a disproportionate amount of “glee” in that particular moment. They don’t mentally keep a running total of their losses. I’ve heard it from people who have played for years. “You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve won,” one will say, nodding wisely. “Definitely more than I’ve lost.” Yeah, you’re right, I wouldn’t believe it.
Shagnasty, you are obviously correct in your assessment of the statistics here, but IMO you seemed a bit harsh in your delivery, being in the Pit notwithstanding.
Good point. I can see how someone might misinterpret what I said to mean that you never win anything. I was, of course, talking about one of the grand prizes. That seemed to be the major consideration as I am not aware of anyone who plays the lottery and fantasizes about winning two dollars. The small prizes are nice and help people to either delude themselves into thinking that they are not loosing money or to think that winning other larger prizes is more likely, but that is not why people play.
Justin_Bailey, I think Shagnasty met your points quite directly. A bit aggressive, but I don’t think anything else would really get through. Scratch that, I doubt it got through either. Anyway, good luck; you’ll need it.
Every time you play the lottery, you lose money . . . even when you win. Any other outlook represents results-oriented thinking (“it turned out well, therefore I made the right decision”).
Granted that it’s perfectly reasonable to spend a few bucks so you can enjoy daydreaming about striking it rich for a while, there still wasn’t anything in this thread that warranted the attacks in your first post. No offense, but between this and the adulterer threads, you seem like one angry dude.
Well, sort of. Depends on what you’re calling “odds”. The more likely you’ll win something, yes. But why even play the lottery for small stakes? Would you play a ticket for $1 where you had a 40% chance of winning $2 (including your own dollar) back? There’s no chance of winning big there - very low variance, you will most likely quickly and steadily lose money along the predictable lines. You’d basically be systematically giving your money away, without the fantasy benefits of having a shot at the big prize, or whatever.
As far as the odds go, in terms of expected value, paying $1 for a 1/20th shot at $10 is the same paying $1 for a 1/2000000th shot at $1,000,000. Given the choice, though, going for the former just seems even sillier. It negates the whole “hey, I’ll take a shot, what the hell” aspect of the big prizes.
I think the difference here is the amount of self delusion and stupidity. If you spend $4 on a cup of coffee, you’re fully aware of what you’re getting out of the deal, and have decided it’s worth it to you.
However, a hardcore lottery player (I’m not talking about the one ticket a week type) is pretty much always delusional. They don’t understand what they’re buying. They’re throwing their money away because they’re stupid.
And yes, I’m going to say stupid. Other people in this thread have said “not necesarily stupid, just bad at math” but that’s not true. You don’t have to understand how to calculate the exact expected value of betting red on a roulette table to understand that multimillion dollar casinos are built on the profit of people doing that very thing, and inherently, it must be designed to work against you. You don’t have to understand math to understand that lotteries are a big money maker for the state - why? because they don’t pay out nearly as much as they take in.
And so if you buy tickets specifically because you feel like you can somehow win money - by feeling out some set of magic numbers, or whatever, that you can somehow beat the system, that’s not only a lack of understanding of the math involved, but that’s stupidity.
And the math needed isn’t very hard. If you have a “pick four” type lottery - where you picked a number between 0000 and 9999, and if you won, you got $500 (IIRC, that’s how it worked in Ohio), it doesn’t exactly take a high level of math education to figure out that having a 1/1000 shot at getting 500 if you win is a bad value.
There are people who go to the casinos and gamble with money they can easily spare, and understand that they’ll probably lose, but they find it fun, and so the lost money is equivelant to spending money for another form of entertainment. I don’t think those people are stupid - they’re just spending their entertainment money that way. The same can apply to someone who buys one lottery ticket a week - the entertainment value, the excitement of the drawing, or whatever, might be worth it to them, even if they realize it’s not a good bet.
But it’s the people who constantly spend money they don’t have, who are convinced that they are due, or that they can somehow beat the system, or that magical fairies sprinkled pixie dust out of their ass over their lottery tickets who should legitimately be looked down upon by rational people.
I’m reminded of a joke that went something along the lines of: A devout religious man has struggled financially all of his life. He prays, and says that he’s always been a good man, but that he could really use some help with his financial hardships. Nothing happens. For months he prays, and eventually asks God why he hasn’t found a way to help him. God responds: “Well help me out here, buy a lottery ticket or something.”
As someone earlier in the thread said - that first ticket can buy you some weight to your daydreams. The second ticket has no value.
It’s interesting to note that any progressive jackpot system can eventually become profitable - that is, have a positive expected value - for every ticket sold. Ignoring the possibility of splits and taxes for a moment, if you spent a dollar on a lottery where your chances of winning were 1 in a million, but the lottery paid out a million and two dollars, every ticket you bought would, in a sense of probability and expected value, expect to turn a profit. Of course, the variance is extreme. And in practice, you’d have to factor in the likeliness of splitting the prize into the equation, and the profit the taxes would take. But there can be a time when, on average, you’re making money.
I remember years ago some sort of company… organization… something tried to capitalize on this very thing. Once the jackpot was high enough, they hired thousands of people to go buy every possible number. I can’t recall what ever came of it.
I worked at a gas station for a few years, and had to deal with this stuff all the time. It seems that there’s a lot of overlap between people who are hardcore about playing the lottery, and people that are rude as hell. Regular I’d be swamped with people - have a long line, be running around hectically - and the lottery players would demand that I sit there and enter all of their numbers manually into the machine, for several minutes, holding up an entire line of customers. Sometimes when I told them to fill out the scan sheets, they’d act offended, as if I were making unreasonable demands on them. Or they’d give me an entire stack of tickets to run through because they were too lazy to check them. For the most part, the more money they spent on the lottery, and the more picky they were about how it was done, the more rude and obnoxious they were.
Edited to add:
I bought a lottery ticket once. I felt pretty silly doing it.
I can’t remember exactly why, but a strange series of coincidences had happened one day, a bunch of “huh, that’s weird” type things. And at some point, later in the night, one of the customers recommended I buy a lottery ticket - I can’t remember why. Anyway, it was a series of strange coincidences followed by that recommendation, that made me say “hey, what the hell - if magical fairies are trying to shit out fairy dust on me, I’ll give it this one shot today” - knowing it was ridiculous, but remembering the joke I just recounted, and figuring what the hell, I could try it once.
No where did I say I had a system to “beat” the lottery. It was just a cheesy game that I was playing with myself to make my winning streak more fun.
And that’s another thing. I only told that ancedote because flight can’t stop prattling on about how IT’S IMPOSSIBLE to win the lottery. I proved it’s not impossible to win. THAT’S ALL.
I have no delusions that I’m going to win the big money. I know the odds very well thank you and I don’t play for the big prize. No one needs to “help me” Shagnasty, and it’s rather patronizing to suggest I have some kind of a problem. I don’t have a gambling problem and I’ve never pissed away the rent at the blackjack table.
Here, how’s this for patronizing: Shagnasty, your previous posts lead to be believe you have a problem with alcohol. You really, really, really, really, need to take a basic course in human wellness. Any of them at all should be fine since you suck so bad at it that this isn’t affecting just your health but almost certainly your life in any relationship (sexual or otherwise) and your employment. Trust me, your life is really impaired by this type of statement and you don’t even know it.
Your post here makes you sound like the biggest drunk we have had here in a while. I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with you. It could be that you are just stupid in which case I would have some measure of sympathy. It is more likely that you are deluding yourself into being stupid in which case I don’t.
Now remember that you’re chastizing me for spending $2 on lottery tickets every couple of weeks.
I buy $1 scratchers precisely because the odds are better to win $20-$40 on those than on any other lottery game. If I win anything higher (which I’ve only done once, that’s why I barely think about it), it’s a bonus.
To VarlosZ: I’m pretty angry in this thread because people are calling me stupid for spending POCKET CHANGE on something I think is fun and harms no one. And occasionally I win money. Personally, I feel sorry for the rest of you. Lack of whimsy and all that.
To Stratocaster: I do keep track of my winnings and losings. This year I’m up $26 and last year I ended up plus $31. So kindly stick your absolutes in a sack.
It was an Australian group, and they did it with the Virginia state lottery when it got big enough in 1992. They actually had a truck (or several) full of pre-filled slips not get entered in time, so they didn’t cover every possible ticket.
I can’t seem to find a cite online that verifies what happened. I’ve found one that claims they only got 2.4 million out of 7 million possible, one that says they only got 5 out of 7, and some that say they won, and some that say they didn’t. I saw a television show on it in the mid 90s that claimed they did in fact turn a respectable profit on the win (more than planned because they got lucky and the winner was not in the tickets that were too late, and they didn’t have to pay for those tickets)
Wow, when I have kids I’ll remind them not to go to Dartmouth; their standards have gone to shit. I’m just a chemist but even I know that “No one can:ever, ever, ever” is incorrect. Improbable, sure, but impossable?
If customers actually mention what tickets they want by name (& the correct name) or just say “Give me a 5$ ticket”, we wouldn’t need to be guided to the precise ticket. What worse is our corporate policy on dealing with lottery customers. By order of the head office we “can’t discriminate against them” :rolleyes: . This meants (true story) that if some old lady comes in and wants 20$ in Powerball and doesn’t want computer picks we have to wait on her and ignore the half-dozen people behind her who just want gas/soda/smokes/etc. She can of course volunteer to wait while I wait on other customers (in fairness alot of our lottery regulars are nice that way), but if I ask her and she calls corporate I could loose my job :mad: . But if head office gets a complaint about some “stupid clerk” who let lines back up doing lottery nothing happens. Just yesterday some guy had me check 46 tickets (some from Dec) he “found in his truck”; none of them were winners .
Justin, you’re psychotically defensive about this.
No one was even really attacking your behavior specifically, until you flipped out in mid-thread. This thread was started about people who made other people wait and were generally rude, rather than people who played the lottery.
My comments were generic - I was not attacking you personally, but rather, as my post made clear, people who were really hardcore about the lottery, thought they had a system, etc.
If you don’t fall into that category, and I didn’t imply that you did, then why bother to get all upset and offended and write that reply?
It seems like you’ve voluntarily taken on the duty to defend any kind of lottery player by any kind of attack.
IMHO most lottery players do not think of playing the lottery as gambling. PA recently legalized casinos and I’ve have my fair share of people complain about how bad gambling is and how this is going to hurt families and poor people and then buy 30+$ in scratch-offs and pay for their groceries in foodstamps. At least once a week someone will ask me if they can get cast back on EBT Cast; we don’t give cash back at all, and we don’t accept EBT (foodstamps only). There’s a 50/50 chance they’ll go outside to our ATM and come back inside, cash in hand, and buy tobacco or lottery.
Yes Justin your characteristization is absolutely correct in a way although I have gotten better and your point is a non sequitur. Your sense of parody is off as well. Any problems I had in the past have nothing to do with your statistical and life skills. I never said you were a habitual gambler. It doesn’t matter if you have only bought five tickets in your entire life. That doesn’t change the fact that you have a fundamental mental and educational deficiency. You aren’t the only one. My grandfather and my childhood best friend are compulsive gamblers. They are smart and can even go through the intracicies of different bets yet they have never taken the leap that you always lose in a lifetime and they try to rationalize it in front of people like me that can clearly see through it.
I don’t believe you. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying based on how you’re coming off in this thread that the likeliest circumstance is that you’re flailing to prove you’re not one of the lotto dunces. Again, I’ll consider the probabilities here and say, I give as much credibility to your claim as I do to all the other “No, really, I do come out ahead, year after year” folks I have encountered. If you are, in fact, someone who has beaten the odds, count your money and chuckle over my ignorance. You’ll have the satisfaction that comes from being both a winner and right. But I don’t think so.
