My question is this…
How frigging destitute are you that losing $2 constitutes this much sturm and drang? Maybe you should waste that princely sum of money to invest in a dream. You can get some really fancy chocolate bars under $2 if you know where to shop. Just saying.
Ender, did you see this? I’m still wondering how you’re figuring the jackpot to be +ev after allowing for the chances of a split pot. Little help?
I saw it. It’s hard to determine a odds of a split pot without knowing how many tickets are being sold. But let me run a few other numbers and I’ll come back with something soon.
OK, so here’s what I’ve come up with. Let’s assume a few things
If that’s the case based upon the odds here: http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp
I calculate that it would cost $584,402,676 to purchase every ticket.
If you did that, you would gross $1,023,468,852.
After taxes (and I’m taxing the grand prize winner, the million dollar winners, and the $50,000 winners, not anything else), you would net $732,168,852.27
That is a profit of $147,766,176.
$81,168,852 of that profit comes from the NON-jackpot amounts which you’ll get regardless of whether there’s another winner.
So Split pot, you’re right. It’s -ev. But since I can’t calculate those odds right now, the best I can say is that it’s very profitable assuming there’s no split pot.
So that was a fun math problem and I could probably go into more detail but I think I want to amend my answer based upon some new information.
This site : Powerball Odds is really good at breaking down the expected return on Powerball. The tables are wonky on my mobile, maybe it’s the same on desktop, but I got a good understanding of it anyway.
There’s a graph that outlines percentage likelihood of 0,1,2+ winners. Based upon my previous calculations, I think if around 150 million tickets were sold it would still be +ev. At around 300-350 M tickets sold, the odds of 0, 1 or split winners all equals out.
And according to a news report I just read, last Saturday’s drawing had around 440M tickets sold. Odds were 77% someone should have won then. I assume that even more gets purchased for Wednesday.
So yeah…odds are good of a split pot and -ev when you factor in taxes.
I regret nothing. I’m gonna win damnit! 
Got it reversed there. The odds of winning the jackpot went down hugely, but the odds of winning any prize went up. That’s the angle the lottery people tried to sell it with - the old’ “yeah, your already astronomically low odds of winning the jackpot just got astronomically lower, but your chance of getting just the Powerball number right and thus winning 4 bucks is now higher!”
Some of us buy tickets as a form of insurance. While I have no doubt that I’m not going to win the thing, I certainly can’t afford for my entire staff to win without me. 
You posted this either to troll or because you consider yourself “above” the masses who bought tickets. Either way you are a dick. I bought 3 tickets, spent 6 buks.
I dont fucking care.
I’d buy a ticket if they were sold locally. $2 for a chance at a billion is fine by me. And yes it’s a stupid tax and I’d be pissing my money away but so what? It’s $2.
I meant the odds against. 
DMC’s reasoning is the best reason ever to be a part of the office pool. Sure, it’s socialization, dreaming etc but the real reason is that the downside of being the only non winner is so incredibly sucky.
Of course supporting the “not stabbing the boss with a letter opener” also prevents a pretty huge downside.
Don’t you realize it’s a form of entertainment?
I mean, seriously, do you actually think people are unaware of the fact the lottery is a bad investment? Jesus Christ. Of course it is; I buy lottery tickets now and then and I know the odds perfectly well. But utility is derived from it in the form of fleeting pleasure an the odd time you win $10 or something.
I paid $19 (VIP theatre) to see “The Force Awakens.” I got no money back for that at all, and had no expectation of getitng any back. The chances of winning the Lotto 649 tonight may be 14 million to one, but that’s still better than the chances I would find seven million tax-free (I’m Canadian) dollars sitting in the theatre. So was my paying for a ticket to “The Force Awakens” a tax of my mathematically challenged self? Of course not, because I derived more than $19 in utility from watching it. Similarly, I plan on buying a $3 ticket to tonight’s Lotto 649 draw and I expect to derive more than $3 in utility from that between the expected return - which is about $2 - and the fun of just thinking what I’d do with the money if I won.
But I wouldn’t… even though I will buy a ticket for the lotteries that happen locally here.
Here’s the thing; if I win, say, the Lotto Max at $50 million CDN (no tax but the exchange makes it about $35 million USD) that will effectively change my life forever; I can retire immediately and we can spend the rest of our lives doing what we will. Believe me, I would not blow it, I’ve got a pathetically detailed plan.
If I won the Powerball I would win 20-25 times more money. But the marginal value of all the money from $50 miillion to $1.2 billion (using Canadian dollars) is next to nothing. There’s really nothing in the world I care to own that I can’t buy for $50 million; I suppose I could buy an NHL team or something, but I have no interest in doing that. Everything I want is within reach of $50 million. The first $50 million will change my life a hundred times more than the next billion.
But while the additional marginal utility of the extra money is minimal, the RISK is huge. If I win the $50 million Lotto Max I will be unknown in the USA and even in Canada will be forgotten within a week by anyone who does not already know me. There have already been lots of Lotto Max winners for tens of millions and nobody remembers who they were. Avoiding scammers, thieves and jerks will take some work but with good planning we can avoid the typical pitfalls. If I win the Powerball, I will be continentally famous and a target for every criminal out there. My children will be targeted for kidnapping. Hackers will seek to blackmail me. The number of people who will come begging will be orders of magnitude higher. The trouble outweighs the extra money.
Just because you don’t see the value doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist for some people.
For my $2, I get a teeny-tiny, infinitesimally small chance to win some of that giant pot of money. I get to have a tiny bit of excitement when the numbers are drawn. Then I get to have a little jokey grumble with all the other losers tomorrow at work.
It’s a little dream, and a little excitement, for a couple of bucks. That’s all.
Good points, Rick, which is why I said somewhere, either here or in one of the 2,376 other threads on the subject, that my choice would be to win $10 million and be left in peace rather than $1.x billion and have a life of stress.
Jordan Belfort – the “wolf of Wall Street” guy – talks about buying a super expensive sports car shortly after he started getting seriously rich. The car just wasn’t ostentatious enough for him, so he arranged with the dealer to have it customized like a fictional James Bond car, with various shields and defensive technologies and such.
But this was real life and not a movie. He could have had a great sports car, but the end result was a piece of shit that was so heavy and unwieldy that it was barely drivable. There’s got to be a parable in there somewhere.
Once the expected value per dollar spent is more than a dollar (as is the case with this Powerball) isn’t it no longer a question of math but instead of risk tolerance?
The father of one of the girls who rode at the barn my daughter rode at was a founder of a Silicon Valley startup which had a very successful IPO. He became having a helicopter take him to work rich. He was buying a houseboat to get the moorage rich.
He bought lots of toys. His wife, who had to deal with the toys and who hated getting assistants, told him no more toys or she was leaving. So I have a lesson about what not to do.
For that additional several hundred billion, I don’t think so much of what I could own but who I could pass the money on to–my kids, important causes, etc.
I don’t get it.
I will.