# What's up with all these lottery threads? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 11, 2016, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861 "2016-01-11T23:34:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/41 "2016-01-12T15:37:03Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > Please don’t call other people mathematically challenged when it’s clear that you either haven’t done the math yourself, or you don’t understand the concept of “expected value”. As **Oredigger77** points out, large jackpots like the current one have an expected value higher than the cost of a ticket. Neither you nor **Oredigger77** seem to understand that “expected value” is a statistical concept, and as such any reasonable probability of the statistical outcome actually occurring requires a sufficiently large sample size. He makes the ridiculous statement that at the current expected value, buying a ticket makes you “5.45% on your investment”. No, buying a ticket with odds of winning at less than 1 in 292 million loses 100% of your “investment” with about as close to certainty as anything can be. People have a hard time intuitively grasping these sorts of odds. In the hours leading up to last Saturday’s draw, Powerball in California alone was expecting ticket sales of between $5 million and $10 million _ **per hour** _. They had sold 10 million tickets just the previous day, in California alone. Even those numbers didn’t budge the astronomical odds. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Yes, but some of those other decisions (like where and how to invest your life savings) can be a lot more costly than an occasional lottery ticket. My point is that people are so smug about this one thing and so careless or irrational in making a thousand other decisions. Sounds like an either-or fallacy. Being “smug” – or as I like to say, “realistic” – about lotteries has no effect on anything else. It’s not like understanding the statistical nature of lottery scams takes up so much mental energy that there’s nothing left for financial prudence anywhere else! ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/42 "2016-01-12T15:45:10Z")
Ooooh, thanks for the reminder! I’ll get my ticket at lunch today. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/43 "2016-01-12T16:04:49Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Neither you nor **Oredigger77** seem to understand that “expected value” is a statistical concept, and as such any reasonable probability of the statistical outcome actually occurring requires a sufficiently large sample size. He makes the ridiculous statement that at the current expected value, buying a ticket makes you “5.45% on your investment”. No, buying a ticket with odds of winning at less than 1 in 292 million loses 100% of your “investment” with about as close to certainty as anything can be. Gee really, you mean the 7-11 isn’t going to hand me $2.11 for every $2 ticket I buy? Wow I never realized this statistics stuff was so hard! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/44 "2016-01-12T16:06:16Z")
No problem! When you win the $1.3 billion, as I’m fairly confident you will, I expect you to throw me a bone of at least a mil for reminding you. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/45 "2016-01-12T16:19:54Z")
I spent $4 on the last drawing, and lost. So today I plan to spend $10 on the new drawing, my odds will be better that way. Fuck math. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/46 "2016-01-12T16:23:26Z")
Ha! sucks to be you I’m going to spend $11 and have even better odds than you. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/47 "2016-01-12T16:26:14Z")
> [@Drunky\_Smurf](#): > > Ha! sucks to be you I’m going to spend $11 and have even better odds than you. 🙂 I learned last week, in my attempt to buy a $5 quick pick, that the tickets are $2 each. ---
**Author:** ![RobDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f07891/32.png) [@RobDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobDog)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/48 "2016-01-12T16:38:00Z")
> [@iljitsch](#): > > … If you are very poor then playing the lottery could be rational, assuming there are no other ways to better your life by investing the same amount of money. But most people are better off saving or investing or using the money to learn a new skill. This is excellent advice which I have decided to heed. I have just spent next month’s lottery ticket money on a medical degree from the University of Doctoring, Pyongyang, DPRK, and a set of X-ACTO knives. Anyone need some urgent surgery? ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/49 "2016-01-12T17:03:16Z")
As I understand “statistics,” the lottery has nothing to do with statistics (at least not odds of winning or ROI). You aren’t working with large data sets, just large numbers. You aren’t sampling ping-pong balls and measuring how “number” they are. The odds of winning the lottery is a simple math problem and doesn’t require statistical modeling. Not sure how stats would even apply. But I think “statistics” is used rather loosely to mean “involves long division”. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/50 "2016-01-12T17:04:57Z")
Or maybe the reason people conflate the two is because probability applies to statistics so people assume statistics apply to probability. ---
**Author:** ![Aangelica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Aangelica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aangelica)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/51 "2016-01-12T17:11:01Z")
I instead prefer to view buying a lottery ticket as exceptionally cheap occupational therapy, since the vast majority of the lottery tickets I have purchased in my lifetime (which amounts, in total, to less than $500) were purchased specifically as work-related things. Either I bought into the office pool (as a gesture towards workplace socialization and being a good sport and all that) or I bought a ticket because my boss was being a shit and purchasing a lottery ticket gave me a theoretical possibility of winning the thing and therefore gave me an assist with the whole “not stabbing my boss with a letter opener” thing. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/52 "2016-01-12T18:19:41Z")
> [@tnetennba](#): > > As I understand “statistics,” the lottery has nothing to do with statistics (at least not odds of winning or ROI). You aren’t working with large data sets, just large numbers. You aren’t sampling ping-pong balls and measuring how “number” they are. The odds of winning the lottery is a simple math problem and doesn’t require statistical modeling. Not sure how stats would even apply. Not sure if you’re being pedantic or just being jerkish, or if there’s really a difference, since I fail to see the point. Yes, to be technically accurate, I should have said “expected value is a concept in probability theory”. So sue me. Although even the Wikipedia article on expected value states that “This article is about the term used in probability theory and statistics.” In common parlance expressions like “statistically unlikely” are commonly used to mean “improbable according to the mathematics of probability theory” without too much backchat from pedantic academics with their shorts in a knot. Statistics do, in fact, have a significant role in lotteries. You’d use statistics to analyze how ticket sales varied with jackpot amounts, for instance, or the relative probabilities of particular numbers or ranges being self-selected by purchasers, both of which could have major impacts on “expected value”. In any case, my point was that “expected value” is meaningless for a small number of instances because the outcome isn’t a continuous function but a discrete one in which the probability of returning any value at all is effectively zero. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/53 "2016-01-12T18:26:38Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > In common parlance expressions like “statistically unlikely” are commonly used to mean “improbable according to the mathematics of probability theory” without too much backchat from pedantic academics with their shorts in a knot. Yep. People think statistics just means “this involves long division.” But I think it takes something less than a “pedantic academic” to know that statistics is not synonymous with “hard math.” E.g., it could be somebody with a dictionary. > [@](#): > > Statistics do, in fact, have a significant role in lotteries. You’d use statistics to analyze how ticket sales varied with jackpot amounts, for instance, or the relative probabilities of particular numbers or ranges being self-selected by purchasers, both of which could have major impacts on “expected value”. In any case, my point was that “expected value” is meaningless for a small number of instances because the outcome isn’t a continuous function but a discrete one in which the probability of returning any value at all is effectively zero. Hence my clarification that statistics don’t apply to odds of winning. ---
**Author:** ![2gigch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/2gigch1/32/3313_2.png) [@2gigch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2gigch1)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/54 "2016-01-12T18:44:18Z")
I don’t play the lottery expecting to win. I play the lottery (on occasion) to buy the right to dream about it for a few days. And for a dollar or five it’s actually pretty cheap entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/55 "2016-01-12T19:02:41Z")
Have you considered that you might just be better than everyone else? I’m sure your gold star will arrive in the mail soon. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/56 "2016-01-12T19:13:59Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Or eating in a restaurant instead of at home… You _eat_ at home? Luxury. Any human can readily subsist on a broth of powdered lentils! More that that is sinful extravagance! ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/57 "2016-01-12T19:15:32Z")
2 bucks is a tax??? I probably lose that forgetting to empty my pockets before I put my pants in the dirty wash basket. I mean, that’s a cup of coffee that you’ll just end up pissing away anyway. Honestly though. If a person won a billion dollars, the curse of the lottery would bite them in the ass so hard they would probably end up with a ruined life. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/58 "2016-01-12T19:25:20Z")
Dear Universe: I volunteer to prove **Morgenstern** wrong. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/59 "2016-01-12T19:37:48Z")
Morgenstern is probably right… winning three million dollars would solve all my problems, but winning a billion would create a bunch of new ones. ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861/60 "2016-01-12T19:52:28Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > As I mentioned elsewhere, the first lottery in North America AFAIK was a municipal one in Montreal in 1968 that was used to help pay for Expo 67 Not true by a long shot. Read the second paragraph under **History** [here](http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ngisc/research/lotteries.html). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-all-these-lottery-threads/742861.md?page=4)