Discussion at the office this morning led to a couple of graphs showing the chances of winning division 1 with different choices of game.





Still, I'm happy to pay for a $70M dream.

Gotta be in it to win it. And I'm in it. Good luck to you all. (not really)

I'd rather have a seventy times higher chance of winning $1M.

Same goes for the $2 scratchies. Get rid of all the minor prizes, and give us a 10 times higher chance of winning the big prize!

you have got more chance of waiting for a wooden rockin horse droppings then winning the big one.

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Harrow said..
I'd rather have a seventy times higher chance of winning $1M.

It still wouldn't be visible on the top graph.

From a statistician's point of view your chances of winning lotto are the same whether you buy a ticket or not, so I'm told.

The other name for lotteries is "poor mans tax" which unfortunately is pretty right.

That said I still buy about 4 tickets a year, just in case.

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Harrow said..
I'd rather have a seventy times higher chance of winning $1M.
Same goes for the $2 scratchies. Get rid of all the minor prizes, and give us a 10 times higher chance of winning the big prize!

Agreed. 70 mil is so much is it crazy.

2 people have 35 mil each tonight, an obscene amount.

Considering that for average peeps 1mil is a winfall and about 5mil is totally life changing I think when it gets this big they need to boost up second and third division rather than having one huge 1st div prize.

I'd rather see 2 people get 10mil, 20 people in 2nd div get 1 mil, then 3rd div all get say $500K instead of the $80K ish.

Make more people really damn happy rather then give somebody something so huge they end up being all the worse for it

Lotteries are an investment vehicle for people who can't do maths.

anyway this reminded me to check my ticket

Had a systems20 (?) one from local newsagent and happy to report we won!!!!!!


I have a 1/20th share of $36

Edit: oh hang on........ have I got 20 x $36? That would be nice :)

$70 mil is an obscene amount of money to win, unless it's me then it's just about the right amount.

wooooo

I got 420 cents :)

I've got expensive note paper

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dinsdale said...
Lotteries are an investment vehicle for people who can't do maths.

Spot on. I really struggle to understand why all these losers flock to buy a ticket in a lottery that has mega times less chance of paying off. Wait till next week and buy a ticket in the 3 mil draw boneheads.

My parents still buy tickets. Their rationale is that they have been buying them for 25 years, if they stop now their numbers will come up the next week.

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Unhook3d said...

dinsdale said...
Lotteries are an investment vehicle for people who can't do maths.

Spot on. I really struggle to understand why all these losers flock to buy a ticket in a lottery that has mega times less chance of paying off. Wait till next week and buy a ticket in the 3 mil draw boneheads.

Huh? Your chance of winning doesn't change week to week.
It only changes depending on whether you enter powerball/ozlotto/Sat lotto etc

^^^ exactly - you still have the same chance of winning every time even if the whole world buys a ticket or only one person buys.
Maybe with more people buying a ticket you have more chance of sharing the prize, but is bigger so that cancels out.

Only true believers win lotto!

squeeze that ticket in the hope you can bend the laws of physics your way

Cheap price for a little hope I guess.

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Mark _australia said...
wooooo

I got 420 cents :)

Don't be negative you just won 42000 tenths of a cent!

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Dawn Patrol said..

Unhook3d said...

dinsdale said...
Lotteries are an investment vehicle for people who can't do maths.

Spot on. I really struggle to understand why all these losers flock to buy a ticket in a lottery that has mega times less chance of paying off. Wait till next week and buy a ticket in the 3 mil draw boneheads.

Huh? Your chance of winning doesn't change week to week.
It only changes depending on whether you enter powerball/ozlotto/Sat lotto etc

No, what this means is that you have a better chance of a significant prize in a smaller draw as there are less people entered. Which is probably behind the term 'paying off'.

The chances of winning something doesn't change, but that amount would.

^^^ I still don't think it would. Did they really sell 10x more tickets for the 70mil draw? I dunno, but I'd think they didnt and thus the winnings rather similar if we consider an average over time.

588 people have read this post; we could make a little open source application that would could accept $10 for you to enter a 8 digit number which would then go into a pool which was randomly selected.

Flow:

1.- You enter a unique 8 digit number
2.- You pay $10 for each 8 dg number
3.- These numbers go into a weekly pool (db)
4.- 1 random number gets selected every week

Your chances of winning = sum(entries)/Your entries.

I'm sure the government would want to get their dirty thieving hands on our money so I'm not sure how legal it is, but it would be fair.

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FormulaNova said..

Dawn Patrol said..

Unhook3d said...

dinsdale said...
Lotteries are an investment vehicle for people who can't do maths.

Spot on. I really struggle to understand why all these losers flock to buy a ticket in a lottery that has mega times less chance of paying off. Wait till next week and buy a ticket in the 3 mil draw boneheads.

Huh? Your chance of winning doesn't change week to week.
It only changes depending on whether you enter powerball/ozlotto/Sat lotto etc

No, what this means is that you have a better chance of a significant prize in a smaller draw as there are less people entered. Which is probably behind the term 'paying off'.

The chances of winning something doesn't change, but that amount would.

Thursday's draw shows otherwise. Two people won 35 million. If you enter a draw of 3 mill, there is no chance to win that.

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Dawn Patrol said..

FormulaNova said..

Dawn Patrol said..

Unhook3d said...

dinsdale said...
Lotteries are an investment vehicle for people who can't do maths.

Spot on. I really struggle to understand why all these losers flock to buy a ticket in a lottery that has mega times less chance of paying off. Wait till next week and buy a ticket in the 3 mil draw boneheads.

Huh? Your chance of winning doesn't change week to week.
It only changes depending on whether you enter powerball/ozlotto/Sat lotto etc

No, what this means is that you have a better chance of a significant prize in a smaller draw as there are less people entered. Which is probably behind the term 'paying off'.

The chances of winning something doesn't change, but that amount would.

Thursday's draw shows otherwise. Two people won 35 million. If you enter a draw of 3 mill, there is no chance to win that.

No, it doesn't show otherwise. It shows that it can happen, but probability suggests that its less likely to happen. I agree that you can't win 35m in a 3m draw.

It could have turned out that 1000 people shared the first division prize.

Either way, I don't care. Enter as many times as you want.