Smeghead:
I don’t know about the number of tickets sold, but the odds of one of those tickets winning is easy enough to check.
The probability of any one ticket winning is 1 in 292 million. So the probability of that ticket NOT winning is 291,999,999/292,000,000. The probability of 428 million independent randomly selected tickets ALL not winning is (291,999,999/292,000,000)^428,000,000, which works out to 23% on my calculator. That means there’s a 77% chance that at least one ticket will win. Dunno how he got 91%, but he’s a stats guy and I’m not.
In practice, the chance would be lower, because many people don’t pick numbers at random – they use birthdays, anniversaries, etc., which means that numbers <= 31 are overrepresented.
TriPolar:
The jackpot is only a portion of the revenue. They’re looking at about $300 million dollars added to the jackpot for tomorrow. So a third of the ticket revenue since the last drawing might be right. They have to give the money to the states to not spend on schools, give a portion to the places that sell the tickets, including bonuses for winning tickets sold, pay off the prizes below the top, take the operator’s profits, and have money left over to start the next drawing at $40 million after I win this one.
Don’t think I didn’t see that.
Get in line.