But is it really a “false” hope if they’re providing accurate odds of winning?
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peas on earth
The lotteries rarely supply the odds of winning. It’s up to the player to learn and understand the mathematics if they want to get a real handle on the odds.
Really? I always thought they had to by law, but I could be wrong.
I just took a quick peek a few of the state lottery web sites, and they all seem to give odds. Often they give two for each game, one for winning anything at all, and one for winning the maximum jackpot.
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peas on earth
Color me lazy, what are those odds?
Surg, for a real concrete demonstration, check out:
http://www.prefect.com/java24/lottorobics.html
It’s a Java applet that conducts one random drawing every second against numbers you pick, and tells you how often you macth 4, 5 and 6 numbers. According to the page, in 3,768,105 drawings conducted since it went online, there have been 56,314 4-of-6 winners, 2,956 5-of-6 winners, and 0 6-of-6 winners.
“Come on, Phonics Monkey–drum!”
The odds of the Lotto jackpots are on the entry forms & info pamphlets here in Virginia.
People just don’t get the magnitude of what 1 in 7,000,000 is.
My boss once though he had a system for one mini-Lotto here in VA. (The odds of winning $100,000 are “only” 175,000:1.) He asked me to print out a list of all the combos. I decided to print them out on a drawing plotter (3’ wide paper) at 5 point and 6 columns. It took 26 15 ft. rolls just to print those out. His eyes popped when he saw the output.
Virginia’s regular Lotto printed out similarly would take 19,500 feet of paper, almost 4 miles!
I play the Poweball fairly consistently, but I don’t blow HUGE bucks on it. A few bucks a week.
I understand that those odds are astronomical, but so what? The odds of winning the Powerball are something like 90,000,000 to one. Well, some guy won it a few weeks ago, and the odds were the same for him as they are for me. And somebody won it a few weeks before him, and the odds were the same for that guy as the were for the next, and so on and so on.
I sincerely believe that there is not a problem that I have that cannot be solved with a huge influx of cash. Seriously. I can buy a new car and be rid of my worthless Neon; I can buy a decent home in the suburbs and be out of this crummy trailer park. I can hire a nutritionist to help me create a good menu, and I can buy better food, and finally lose some weight. The list goes on…
How millions of dollars can ruin someone’s life is beyond me. If any rich people feel that their money is ruining their lives they can send it all to me!