Lottery
Lotteries: The tax on failing math class.
Just The Facts
- The odds of winning a Mega Millions Jackpot are 175,000,000 to one.
- The odds, as an American Male, of being Tom Cruise are only 150,000,000 to one.
- You are more likely to call heads twice, roll a six and then be struck by lightning than win a regular 6/49 lottery.
Recession Raises Lotto Sales
The recession has seen a rise in lotto sales as people streamline their financial idiocy from "paying for money they don't have" to "paying for money they'll never have." Even the Wikipedia article says that "buying a lottery ticket reduces the buyer's expected net worth," and when someone writing Wikipedia articles on lottery systems starts to call you worthless, you should probably be returned as defective by organ farmers.
The Odds Against You
Lotto sales increase every time there's a bigger jackpot--precisely correlating with how often statisticians cry. Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries generate greater prizes by increasing the odds against winning; from the usual near-certaint 14,000,000 to one to 175,000,000 to one. In other words, you'd have a better chance of picking a Russian at random and getting Prime Minister Putin.
Big Cash Prize*
Say you win a million dollars. First off, no you didn't. You've won the option for regular yearly payments that add up to a million (if you live long enough). If you insist on a lump sum then you'll get about half that. And if you insist on living in the U.S., that becomes income taxable--because in the US buying lottery tickets apparently counts as a job--meaning you get half of that half. And if you're an idiot (and by definition all lotto winners are people who think "spending money on the lottery" is a sound investment strategy) that'll be gone just about in time for you to have quit your job, pissed off everyone you know and developed an expensive habit or two your old job at the Subway won't quite cover.
Some online lotteries divide up "million-plus" prizes into $25,000 a year over 40 years, making lottery winners worse paid than a manager at McDonald's, and put a big chunk into a "balloon prize" at the very end. "BALLOON" being an acronym for "Haha, We Know That Either You Or We Will Be Gone By Then" (not a very good acronym but an excellent financial strategy).
Make Me A Millionaire
In final proof that He Who Is Satan has not only come to Earth but set up a business, California is combining reality TV and scratch cards in "Make Me A Millionaire" - a game* where contestants pay for scratch cards for the chance of winning an appearance on TV. The moment people stopped dreaming of being millionaires, and instead dreamed of maybe having the chance to be on reality TV, is recorded as the exact date hope died.
First time to join the lottery and won $ 3,000.. not bad.. :)
ReplyGive it a f*****g rest. Have you ever thought that maybe some people just think it's fun to sometimes spend one little dollar and daydream for awhile?
ReplyI... don't see how spending a dollar or three on a scratch-off is an different than any other form of entertainment. It's the same as setting aside thirty bucks for a trip to a casino or something. You don't really expect to win, but it's nice if you do, and either way, you've managed to kill some time.
ReplyLike I say, anything is fine in moderation, with the exception of potassium cyanide.
Actually you have a 1 in 2.5 chance of winning at least $2, which is more them you paid for the ticket. As for winning a few million, the odds are still far higher then what you gave because you lied by giving only the odd of winning the fullr ticket WITH powerball! Which of course is going to be a LOT less then just winning four numbers on a regular ticket, which is what is required to win "a lot of money". In addition, spending A DOLLAR A FRICKIN WEEK on ANYTHING that might have a remote possibility of making somethkngyou really want happen, is NEVER all that stupid because IT'S A DOLLAR A FRICKIN WEEK! If a HOMELEES human can afford it then everyone else definitely can! (Though, I don't, but could.) And it definitely makes sense for more tickets to be purchased during an economic downturn, because the tickets are cheaper then ever before due to the one dollar you use to pay for it bring worth so little, though, this isn't why people are buying more IF that's true (reasonably, you would actually expect the sales to DECREASE based on how people act in that, you know, poor people usually don't buy lottery tickets), however, using logic and common sense it makes sense to have more people buying tickets now when they're cheaper.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYou're an idiot.
Not only are you the exact type of person being described in this article but also, you're so retarded you don't know the difference between the words "than" and "then".
"the tickets are cheaper then ever before"
You are more likely to die on the way to buy the ticket.
Poor people are the only ones who buy lottery tickets. And, no, it's not worth playing the lottery. It's impossible to come out ahead, statistically. Sure, one person, every so often wins a fortune, but they are rare as hell, precisely because a lottery could not function if it wasn't a losing proposition (aka, casino logic). And even many of the people who win just blow the money and wind up more miserable than before. We should abolish the lottery out of pity if nothing else.
You don't always have 1 in 175,000,000 chance, say there are three doors, behind one of them is a car, you open one that doesn't have the car behind it, the other two doors just got a 33.3 percent higher chance of having the car behind it, basically, you will probably get the car, now in say in real life you have a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of winning the lottery, 33,000,000 million tickets have been bought, you're chance of winning increases because there are 70,000,000 million tickets that could be the winning one. get it?
Reply Hide All See All 6 Repliesthat still makes it a horrible idea that'll lose you money
70,000,000 tickets is still more than enough to keep you from having any realistic chance of getting the one right ticket
Plus, in that door analogy, the odds do not increase for you, let alone by 33.3%. If you pick a door, and another door is eliminated, then nothing about what you've done changes; there were always going to be 2 wrong answers, correct? Now you simply know one of them. There is no change to the odds that you have picked the winner, because you still chose from a one-in-three scenario. Knowing that one of the other doors is wrong changes nothing.
Plus, both the other doors have a 33.3% higher chance, then there is a total of 133.2% to the equation.
Amyler actually the door scenario holds true. to put it in a better way, changing only the number of doors to make it a more extreme case say there were a million doors. now choose one. I'm now going to eliminate 999998 doors that i guarantee are WRONG choices. All of the chances of the doors eliminated are transferred to the one door you didn't pick which now has a 99.9999% of holding the prize. You may call this cheating but its the same fundamentals just a more extreme case.
Im not too familiar with the rules of Mega Millions but for other lottery games how to figure out your odds really quickly just grab a SCIENTIFIC calculator, and find the nCr button (means how many numbers you have [n], Choose [C], and how many numbers you can choose [r]) for 6/49 you choose 6 out of 49 possible numbers so hit 49 nCr 6 and you get 13983816 to 1. These are your precise odds of winning 6/49, usually rounded to 14 mil for obvious reasons
No that's wrong because if you have a 1/2000 chance in winning a lottery and 1,999 peole have already bought tickets you still have a 1/2000 chance in winning because 1) you're not all buying unique numbers and 2) those tickets haven't all been shown to be losers anyway, even if you were.
@Crunk Or, you know, look at the back of the ticket=\.
in america it's horseshit brit and euro lotto pay it in one sum and there's no tax on it (except it is if you buy things with it)
Replyand if they almost always have a winner... so that's a few hundred thousand to one no matter how you do the math
It's not true that all lotteries are necessarily negative expected value. Lottery players tend to pick their numbers in very idiosyncratic, non-random ways (birthdays, kids ages', lucky numbers, etc. that tend to be below
Replywait...what?
Whether or not the individual finds meaning in the numbers they pick has absolutely no bearing on the result. No matter what your "system" is, you have the same odds as anybody else.
Haha love it. Derren Brown (an English mentalist) did a show last week week where he won the lottery live on TV. He quoted "You are more likely to die whilst watching the lottery than you are to win it."
Replyhaha i love that Derren Brown is "an english mentalist"
I never play Lotto, I play Fantasy 5 (5/35). 1 in 350,000 chance as opposed to 1 in 23 to 175 million chance? Yeah I'll take the 250 or so grand. And I only spend like a dollar a week.
ReplyActually, the chance of winning a 5/35 lottery is 1 in 52,521,875, not 1 in 350,000.
I don't know about other provinces but in my province of Quebec there are no taxes on what you win no matter how big.
ReplyCasino and lottery money is not taxable. And Im pretty sure most provinces in Canada is the same.
Great topic Luke. don't know about the US, but in Canada, the provinces own all rights to selling lottery tickets, so basically any semblance of fair odds are thrown out the window because it's a monopoly.
ReplyDon't forget that if you're a good person, God favours you and this will increase your chances of winning. No on else who plays the lottery is a good person.
I just won $1,700 on lotto this weekend so SMB!!!
ReplyI find it amazing that the people I know who seem to be very smart buy lottery tickets regularly.
ReplyThat last sentence just made this great.
ReplyIn some rare occasions, the expectation value (i.e., what you expect to get, on average) for a $1 ticket is more than $1 due to rollover or prior weeks' jackpots. Thus, if the odds are 40 million to one and the pot is $150 million, the take is $150M (oops, they lie, it is really $75M, and after tax, $45M), the expectation value is $45M/40M. You also need to take into account that you might have to share, but the math more or less works out if there are around 40 million tickets purchased. This doesn't occur that often, since higher jackpots probably cause more sales and that drives the denominator down.
ReplyIt is too bad that there are so few people who understand math because I think it would be amusing to have a lottery system with a high ratio of rational people. It makes no sense to pay $1 for a ticket in a 40M-to-1 lottery with a $7M payoff when you can pay $1 for a ticket in a 40M-to-1 lottery with a $100M payoff, so rational people would not contribute to the lower jackpots. In a mostly-rational world, the lottery officials would be pulling their hair out trying to sell tickets to a limited number of idiots until the breakeven point is reached, then their machines suddenly overload with the rational people buying in, and then suddenly stopping once the expectation value goes down below $1.
I play the lottery every week. "Play" = fantasize about what you might change in your life, in the world, etc. if you suddenly had a checkbook with no effective bottom (or a cocaine habit, in which case the bottom comes pretty soon). I play for free each week, because I don't actually buy a ticket, I just PLAN on buying a ticket. The ticket isn't actually required for playing the game. And the odds are not much different.
If someone you know is addicted to the lottery, just ask them to pick a number between 1 and 50 that you secretly wrote down. If they actually guess right, repeat two more times. If they hit three in a row, quickly change the subject, but otherwise, say "Sorry, loser".
To really screw with their minds, ask them how they would feel if they just skipped a few weeks of buying lottery tickets. If they point out that they don't want to take a chance at missing out, point out that not picking their favorite number in next week's lottery runs the same risk of missing out as not picking 4-6-23-34-1-8 in this week's lottery. So, really, missing next week is the same as missing some numbers this week. Assuming that they don't have more than $40M in ones, they need to spend all of the money they have and max their credit cards, THIS WEEK, or they might miss out.
I found a great dating site____ http://www.wealthyfish.com _____. The best dating club for seeking the rich singles, sexy beauties and even hot celebs.. what's the most important is that you dont have to be a millionaire.but you can meet one.
ReplyWhat's kind of relationship do you want? Hope you can find your perfect match.
The funny thing is google ads outing stuff like "win a house, just buy a 10$ ticket" (i think no body that really use this page may ever play lotto, and does how did it now will never do it again after reading this article so, big lol google xD ).
Replyunfortunately my mom is obsessed with the lotto even though I tell her the odds 175,000,000 to one
ReplyNever tell me the odds!
ReplyHaha Luke this is great! You are among the best on Cracked.
Reply