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

If there are 14 million possible combinations of lottery numbers, then if you have one ticket, you have a 1 / 14,000,000 chance of winning, right?

If you have 14 million tickets, with every possible combination, you have a 1/1 chance of winning.

So.... if you have 7 million combinations, is your chance 1/2?

If you have 2 tickets, is your chance 2 / 14,000,000 (i.e. 1 / 7,000,000?

We've just been having a big debate about this, my colleaue reckons that it doesn't work that simply...

Yes, it is that simple.

1 ticket = 1 in 14 million (actually 13,989,xxx - can't remember the last three digits).

So if you spent nearly £14m on tickets, you'd be guaranteed a win. (if you could actually physically buy any in the time available). But usually the win is much, much less than £14m, and has to be shared out among winning tickets in any case.

And yes, the odds are as simple as you suggest:

2 tickets = 2 in 14m chance, i.e. 1 in 7 million.
3 tickets = 3 in 14 million, i.e. 1 in 4.6 million
and so on.

So 7 million tickets would indeed get you a 50/50 chance of a win. But ask yourself this:

Would you bet £7,000,000 on the toss of coin - where if you lose you get nothing and if you WIN you lose the £7m and only get £2m or so back?

My own take on the lottery odds is this:

If you buy NO ticket, your odds of winning are zero.
If you buy ONE ticket, your odds go from zero to 1 in 14 million. That increment - i.e. from nothing at all to SOMETHING, however small - is surely worth a pound.
If you buy a second ticket, your odds go from one in 14 million to one in seven million, i.e. from something very small to something else very small. THAT I think is NOT worth a pound.

Therefore, the rational way to play the lottery is to buy just one ticket for each draw.

If your colleague thinks it isn't that simple, I suggest you challenge him to explain precisely how he thinks it works, then get him to post it here, and I'll explain to him why he's wrong.



H.

There is an entry on this subject, which I seem to recall spent quite a while in PR, so it *should* be fairly reliable - A2390032 - "How to Improve Your Chances of Winning the Lottery".


Geggs

Wouldn't it be better to say that if you could buy all 14,000,000 tickets, all by yourself, and no one else could buy any, that you could guarantee winning?


Statistics and reality don't always coincide, you know!

SC

Previous post notwithstanding, does anyone know the name of the Lottery ?

Super Lotto Plus is $100 million tonight, and baby needs new shoes!



SC

In Minnesota and other states that play the Powerball, the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 120,000,000. This means that your chances of winning are about the same whether or not you buy a ticket - buying one ticket will only improve your odds by 0.000000000083 percent, which I don't think is worth a dollar. The only reason people play is because the jackpot is huge (I've seen it over $300,000,000).

Whilst that "How to improve your chances etc" entry is mildly entertaining, it woefully disregards:
1) the NPV of your investment in the lottery
2) the expectation of one's income rising over and above inflation, and therefore the increase in surplus money for investment in future years.
3) the health benefits of strolling down to the corner shop every Saturday afternoon.

No, in reality there is no way of increasing your chances of winning on a lottery.

All you can do is increase your chances of maximising the payout in the unlikely event that you do win. You do this by picking unpopular combinations and avoiding certain pitfalls:
1) nothing less than 31 - lots of folk pick birthdays as their numbers.
2) throw in some doubles, or even a triple or two - most people spread their numbers out believing that this helps somehow. They're wrong.
3) don't use a spatial pattern around the playing board as loads of people use these - corners, lines, diagonals etc
4) don't pick last week's numbers - up to 1,500 per week do so
5) definitely don't pick 1 2 3 4 5 6 - 3,000 per week pick this, and I can't wait for the day it comes up and they get to pick up their winners cheque of, erm, about 2 grand each
6) become Gordon Brown - he gets a nice fat cut of the stake money, plsu income and corporation tax from the ticket sellers and the lottery company.

First off, Baby may need new shoes, but Baby only buys ONE ticket when the pot is WELL over $100 mil....I was making my usual feeble attempt at a joke. Even then, I just buy one for fun.

And don't discount the value of a good walk -- worth way more than any lottery!

That being said...



Doesn't ANYONE know the name of the Lottery ? I know the name of the parking/traffic , but ...

SC