h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't want to sound belittling/arrogant, I can't stand the tone you get on some internet boards, but you've made a couple of mistakes with your odds - 1) buying all your tickets on one week would not increase your odds if you were going to buy those tickets in the long run anyway. it's just better odds of winning *on that day*, you're still as likely to *ever* win the lottery (you're perfectly sound about deciding "well if I'm gonna win let's win now and not wait around to see if it'll happen). I don't know if you meant it that way, but it doesn't come across. 2) if you bought tickets from now to the rest of your life, you would not on average win some time in the middle of your life, winning weeks would be perfectly scattered over the years you play. You make a great point though - that if you play the lottery to win, then play with balls and put it all on one wee. A super rollover. you either win or lose, and that's that, rather than dragging the thing out over years with this phony dream on your back ("this week, God, this week")

He's not saying 'on average you'll win in the middle,' he's saying 'if you win, it can be averaged in the middle.' It's a simple matter of median. He's also not saying 'why not get the winning done now' because buying 2500 tickets would greatly increase your odds, thus you're more likely than ever to win that week.

although that's the way it's worded, i would argue in its context nobody will take it as such. and they'd be right, because it conveys no useful information.

I'm not sure about this (statistics is tricky) but if you buy all your tickets now, the odds are essentially the same as if you buy the same tickets over a lifetime.

I have done a calculation below, basing the maths around buying 2,500 tickets, each with a probability of winning of around 1 in 14 million:

If you buy them all now, assuming they are all different, the odds of winning are 2,500 in 14 million, which is 1 in 5,600, as the article points out.

If you buy the same tickets one per week, spread over 2,500 weeks, the odds of NOT winning each week are 13,999,999 divided by 14 million, and the cumulative probability if NOT winning, over the course of the period, comes to 13,999,999 divided by 14 million, all raised to the power of 2,500.

When you do the number-crunching, you find that the odds of winning over a lifetime do in fact come to the same figure as before: 1 in 5,600 - well, in fact the odds are very slightly higher, but the difference is insignificant.

I guess this was already known, but in case it wasn't... of course it is an advantage to win now rather than later.

I get the feeling that the motivation for this Entry is similar to mine for A1084673 "How to Gamble and Win" -- to say more or less "this is a mug's game, don't do it".

Of course the most efficient way to get results from a roulette wheel is to stake your evening's limit on one equal-money bet and get it over with.

I'm afraid it's whistling down the wind, since gamblers prefer to stimulate themselves continuously, with repeated (though small) prospects of all-redeeming gain.

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