Always reminds me of this comic, too.
Your math is slightly off. Actually, s/he upped his/her chances by about 1,400%! (assuming no 2 tickets have the exact same numbers)
No but strangely I was attacked by both a grizzly and a polar bear last evening. How so? Just lucky I guess.
I was attacked by a grolar bear, that is luck!
Family and friends were all talking about the big powerball jackpot at Thanksgiving. It was the first I’d heard of it, so you can probably guess that I won’t buy a ticket.
Can someone explain why the extra super duper bigified jackpot is driving people into such a frenzy? I don’t get it.
If you are the kind of person whose life will seriously change from winning a jackpot, isn’t 50 million going to do about as much for you as 500? When you tell your boss to bite your shiny metal ass, all that matters is that you are rich, right? A businessman who is already worth 10 million would probably treat the two jackpots differently, but he’s not likely to play the lottery anyway.
If you are just playing for the “fun” of fantasizing about winning, then why does the amount matter? If it was 50 million instead of 500, just pretend that you invested it in something that grows to half a billion in a couple of days. Then you get your dinosaur jet pilots. It’s a fantasy, all bets are off! For that matter, why throw away money at all? Playing make-believe is free, which is the main reason parents encourage kids to do it.
I’m off to make a drawing of my illuminated, hydroelectrically-powered, solid diamond ziggurat. Then I have to figure out the schedule for the movies that will be shown on the north side of it next week.
That’s how I see it. Spend a couple bucks, dream a little dream, then life goes on as normal. No harm, no foul.
I’m heading out for a coffee. I will buy my ticket. I’m considering picking the numbers 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6.
Hell, I’m not going to win anyway; may as well lose with style.
I threw two bucks into the office lottery pool a little while ago. There’s ten of us in on it. Just seemed a shame not to do it when I was asked.
Of course for the same two bucks I could have bought a dozen really good chocolate chip cookies at the tech school next door. Maybe I did myself a favor because I wouldn’t have any better sense than to try to eat all dozen cookies at one time. 
I don’t know if people are thinking of it in quite these terms, but expected value.
If you play a $1 lottery that has a 1 in 100 million chance of winning, and the jackpot is $50 million, you’d expect 50 cents back for every dollar you spend. That’s an outright loss.
But if that 1 in 100 million chance pays out $150 million, then you’d expect to get $1.50 for every dollar you spend. If you have $100 million to spend on the lottery, you’ll realize a profit of $50 million.
The Powerball jackpot has odds of 1 in 175,223,510 and is a $2 lottery. That means that once the jackpot passes $350,447,020, the expected value of each ticket is greater than 100%. If you buy 175,223,510 unique draws, you’re guaranteed to realize a profit. Right now the lump sum is at $360 mil and the annuity payout is $550 mil.
Naturally, this is all hugely theoretical, and the fewer draws you buy the more it’s simply abstract probability. The odds of any one draw haven’t gone up, but each draw is theoretically worth more.
Kicked in ten bucks for our little office pool.
I thank in advance all the poor people who are helping to finance my soon-to-be Scrooge McDuck-like lifestyle.
I kicked in $6 for your new lifestyle and will be looking forward to receiving a handwritten thank you note.
Wait a minute. That’s how it works? Plenty of institutions have that kind of money to invest. Why doesn’t Warren Buffet, or some state employees pension plan, just go and buy enough tickets to get a dead certain win every single time there is a lottery?
They don’t always pay off that well, the payout isn’t always higher than the cost of buying every number combination. This was done once with the Florida state lottery. A syndicate attempted to purchase almost all number combinations. I believe only 5 numbers were needed for the win making it a more practical venture. They did win, but they caused a lot of problems for the ticket vendors and weren’t able to get all the tickets they planned on purchasing so there was still the risk of losing everything.
Because if another person picked the same winning numer, then you’d have to split the winnings. That’s why I’d counsel them to spend all their money buying multiple copies of the exact same ticket. Then when that number wins they get a bigger percentage. Smart, eh?
I put in $2 for the office pool; 16 of us are in it.
Something weird happened with the board, because I posted just before you and it didn’t show up.
Really.
Take my word for it.
This is the key. You’ve got to buy the tickets.
Look at it this way, you’ve got a window of 3-4 days to buy 175 million tickets. And if you want to be absolutely certain of getting the right combo, you don’t want duplicates, so you have to specify:
1-1-1-1-1 PB 1
1-1-1-1-2 PB 1
And so on down the line. You have to order them and print them; I’d be utterly amazed if the lottery commission would allow someone to just bypass the standard lottery procedure and buy digital combinations without requiring the ticket printout, or just drop $350 mil down and say “Gimme my winnings.”
The vast amount of work in such a limited amount of time requires a vast amount of manpower, and paying for such may itself be sufficient to wipe out any realized profit.
Also what lieu said. One other person with the winning combo can completely ruin the whole thing.
That all said, I’d be astonished if nobody won tonight, simply because of the sheer number of tickets that will be sold.
I bought two tickets. Sure, I can daydream anytime … but tonight I have an actual chance at being filthy rich before the night is over 
If you play, you are almost certain to lose.
If you do not play, you are certain to lose.
There is a slight difference, and that is what dreams are made of.
I’m not participating, but I sure hope someone on this board has all the bragging rights tomorrow morning. (And, I hope they remember Uncle Morgenstern too)
A friend of mine picked up a couple tickets for me today. It’s worth the cash to spend tonight dreaming of what if’s.