in reply to Lottery combinations golf
Others have explained combinations, and they
are correct, as far as they go. However,
if you're going to apply math to the lottery, what
you ought to be calculating is the expected return
on your investment. It varies from state to state,
but generally speaking if you calculate it you never
buy lottery tickets again. HTH.HAND.
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Re: Re: Lottery combinations golf
by Cody Pendant (Prior) on Oct 12, 2003 at 21:06 UTC
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...what you ought to be calculating is the expected return on your investment. It varies from state to state, but generally speaking if you calculate it you never buy lottery tickets again
People often say that, you know, and I think they're missing the point.
There are a lot of variations on the theme of "the lottery is a tax on people who can't do math" that come up in these kind of discussions, but the fact remains it's the only form of gambling which has million-to-one payouts.
I could gamble on horse races instead, and for a dollar I can get the excitement of dreaming of winning ... ten dollars. With the lottery, I can put down a dollar and have the excitement of dreaming of winning a million. I know the odds against it are much more than a million to one, (something like 7,000,000 to one in NSW) but that's not the point. Also, my odds of winning it are infinitely greater than yours because you don't have a ticket, due to your unfortunate ability to do math.
I can dream...
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There are a lot of variations on the theme of "the lottery is a tax on people who can't do math"
Sometimes when people commonly say a thing, it's
a myth, or a meme that they all got from the
same place. Sometimes it's because the thing is
plain for anyone to figure out who does the figuring.
but the fact remains it's the only form of gambling which has million-to-one payouts
All forms of organised gambling, whether a lottery or
casino games, are rigged heavily toward the house.
Let me put it to you this way: even under optimal
condition, if you could buy the tickets only at the
perfect times when the ratio of the jackpot verses
the probability of winning most favours you, if you
could buy every ticket sold, you would lose money
even before you had to pay taxes on your "winnings".
You would lose money every time, without exception.
If the lottery were not run by the state, it would
be criminal under various laws regarding fraud and
other ways of taking advantage of gullible people.
With the lottery, I can put down a dollar
and have the excitement of dreaming of winning a
million.
I can dream for free about winning
a million dollars, or about inheriting a kingdom,
or about anything. Dreams are free. Convincing
people to pay money for something that's free is
one of the oldest and best-known scams in the book.
Also, my odds of winning it are infinitely
greater than yours
Mathematically speaking, this is a wash. My expected
returns, at zero, are a good deal higher than yours.
Look, the money is in your hands, and if you want to
spend it on tickets that's your decision to make, but
since you were talking about math, I just thought I'd
bring up the mathematical side of the thing. If you
want to buy dreams, hey, it's your money. Some people
justify it by saying it's fun, and all forms of
entertainment cost money. Sure, okay. But as far
as the mathematics of the thing are concerned, it's
an expenditure, not an investment of any kind.
Ordinarily I don't trouble most people with this,
because it just upsets them, but you were showing
enough interest in math that I thought maybe you'd
be interested.
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Look, the money is in your hands, and if you want to spend it on tickets that's your decision to make, but since you were talking about math, I just thought I'd bring up the mathematical side of the thing. If you want to buy dreams, hey, it's your money. Some people justify it by saying it's fun, and all forms of entertainment cost money. Sure, okay. But as far as the mathematics of the thing are concerned, it's an expenditure, not an investment of any kind. Ordinarily I don't trouble most people with this, because it just upsets them, but you were showing enough interest in math that I thought maybe you'd be interested.
Given that you won't participate in a lottery because math
says that your expected winning is less than your wager,
would you participate in a gambling if the expected winnings
is higher than the wager? Or to be more concrete, give the
following game: a coin is flipped until it comes up
head, on the nth flip. You are then paid 2n dollars. How much are you willing to pay to participate
in this game? Standard math will say "everything you own".
Despite there's a 50% chance you'll end up with 2 dollars.
There's a solution to this problem http://rec-puzzles.org/sol.pl/decision/stpetersburg and part of it that involves the observation that one's desire for money
isn't linear in the amount of money involved. Your first
million dollars means more to you than your second.
But there are other things involved as well. Even if people
don't win at a lottery, they get something out of it. Just
the thrill of participating, seeing the numbers fall, or
the dream of getting rich. It's not at all different from
people paying money to get into a roller-coaster. The expected monetairy gain is 0. Yet people are willing to pay
the price, because it satisfies some need. That's an economical explaination, but economics involves a lot of
math as well.
Abigail
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Well thanks again, but I can't help thinking you're being patronising. Despite the fact that this thread proves I'm not very good at math, I do know the math involved, and I do know that if I were to buy every ticket out there I would make a loss.
(Though there was a syndicate of people a while ago who waited until the cost of covering every possible combination was less than the jackpot, and went out and methodically covered every possible combination. Interesting story.)
But someone is going to win a million dollars tonight, and despite 7,000,000 to one odds, it might be me.
To put it another way, I have a piece of paper in my pocket that may or may not be worth a million bucks. You don't. I think the contents of my pockets are more exciting than the contents of your pockets.
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Of course with a basic understanding of saving and investment, virtually any competent educated person in an affluent country can readily save over a million dollars in a lifetime. Of the benefits reported by those who have done so, the single biggest one is the ease of mind that comes from knowing that no short-term crisis is likely to be beyond your means.
Conversely the average lottery winner winds up a short time later with the winnings being only a fading memory. And most people live with a justified fear of uncontrollable financial crises due to uncontrollable outside circumstances.
But the potential lottery winner certainly gets more excitement than the plodding but fairly certain path to (modest) riches. Most people seem to find that worthwhile. At least that is how they behave.
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Do I really need to say that I lead a quiet, industrious life, am buying property, investing, have insurance and so on, but I also play the lottery? It seems like you all think I must be some kind of vagrant or otherwise lead a completely dissolute life simply because I play the lottery.
I used to live, through an accident of fate, in a part of town that was just packed to the gills with millionaires. The average home would have been the other side of two million -- but believe me, those people did their lottery entries every week just the same as the poor people.
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Re: Re: Lottery combinations golf
by hagen (Friar) on Oct 13, 2003 at 03:09 UTC
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I'm sorry I can't give an attribution to this - what may be just another meme - but it has a certain wicked "mathlessness" about it!
"Your best chance of winning the lotto is not to buy a ticket. The probability of your being delivered the winner's cheque due to a postal error is much higher"
hagen
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