This Lottery Business

no, them playing only increases their chance of winning, it does not affect your chance for losing or winning. Unlike a raffle, there is never a guarantee that the prize will even go out.

Being in a generous mood and not having any good Viking threads to chime in on, If I win the jackpot, even if I split it with several others, I’ll pay each person $10,000 who posts after me, on this site, with the phrase, “I Love the Minnesota Vikings”

BK, you have to type, “I love publicly funded stadiums” for a $1000 bonus.!!

Damn the odds!

ET

PS, Must post before the drawing.

I Love the entertainment that the Minnesota Vikings bring to the NFL. Can’t let a good blunder go to waste

cougareye wrote:

Being in a generous mood and not having any good Viking threads to chime in on, If I win the jackpot, even if I split it with several others, I’ll pay each person $10,000 who posts after me, on this site, with the phrase, “I Love the Minnesota Vikings”

BK, you have to type, “I love publicly funded stadiums” for a $1000 bonus.!!

Damn the odds!

ET

PS, Must post before the drawing.

Can I just quote you and still have good “odds” that you’ll pay off the 11 grand???.

Eric, couldn’t you just pay for the damn stadium??

I Love the Minnesota Vikings

I love publicly funded stadiums

Statements posted under duress.

Here might be some food for thought. What if you win with the number you pick, and someone else picks that same number. I know that the prize is split two ways but doesn’t that make your winnings at a 50-50 odds even though it was by chance. I think being able too choose the right number is determined by what kind of skill a person has, too choose the right number, but are you in competition with everyone when it comes to you both choosing the same number. Does the odds come before or after the number was drawn that made you both winners or is it just a chance win. In other words whats the odds of someone doing that and I know its been done. Is it 1/2 of the lottery tickets sold to 1? beings there was two winners.

mossydan wrote:

Is it 1/2 of the lottery tickets sold to 1? beings there was two winners.

Odds are still the same to win. It’s just that the winning prize is 1/2 of the original prize. I believe for the last lottery, there were 400 million tickets sold, but those 400 million only covered 70% of the total numbers. So the winning numbers just happened to be in that 30% that nobody picked. So there are lots of people who pick the same numbers.

I love the Minnesota Vikings. I really do!

You guys are killing me so I had to show my work.

Here are the odds when you buy a second ticket.
1 in (69*68*67*66*65*26)/(5*4*3*2*1) + 1 in ((69*68*67*66*65*26)-(5*4*3*2*1))/(5*4*3*2*1)
which is the same as
1 in 292,201,338 + 1 in 292,201,337 = 2 / 292,201,337.5
which is the same as
1 in 146,100,668.75 or, 2 distinct sets of numbers has an odds of 1 in 146.1 million.

But that assumes a distinct choice in the numbers picked. The reality is that the quick pick is a random number generator. I do not know if they program in a fail safe to avoid picking the same set of numbers on a single ticket but in the wild, a random number generator can statistically pick the same set of numbers back to back.
In which case the math is even simpler.

2/292,201,338
which equals
1/146,100,669 Slightly different but not much, and much simpler to calculate.

So yes, buying more tickets increases your odds.

P.S. I ran this buy someone with a masters in Math to verify.

I am no master in Math, but…… I am smart enuff to know buying more chances, increases “your odds” to pick the correct set of numbers.

That and “I love the Minnesota Vikings” (Blair Walsh included) and…

I am warming up to this BK guy who supports Public Money Stadiums.. rumor has it he is stumping for a new Soccer Stadium next summer !!

With two people winning with the same numbers and splitting the lottery at 50% I know its by chance, but it still begs the question of whats the mathematical odds of that happening, is it odds or is it strictly by chance. Does the odds question have to do with some other comparison or Is the odds question relative to the 50-50 win.

Odds and probability absolutely increase with every ticket you buy. Your odds of winning with 2 tickets are twice as good as when you have one ticket, what a deal! The problem is that the odds are so miniscule to begin with that even by increasing your odds by 100 or 1000x it still doesn’t even touch the ‘fat chance’ mark.

Randy Wieland wrote:

This has become very entertaining to read
If your flipping a coin, every individual flip is a 50/50 chance. However, if you flip heads 10 times in a row, the PROBABILITY of Tails coming up next increases exponentially – but the odds always remain 50/50.

But these are independent trials! I could flip a coin 100 times and get 100 heads, but the next flip still has a 50% probability of being heads or tails(1:1 odds).

The probability of the first event happening(100 heads in a row) is miniscule(.5^100. You are actually more likely to win the powerball, consecutively, three times, than you are to get 100 straight heads on a coin flip), but that event is completely independent of my 101th flip.

“That roulette wheel has hit four blacks in a row, I’ll bet red because it’s due”.

I think maybe the wording is what’s getting me though. Flipping a coin 100 times and getting 1 head and 99 tails IS a lot more likely than flipping it 100 times and getting 100 heads. There are 100 different combinations of 1 tail + 99 heads while there is only one combination of 100 heads. This might be what you are referring to. However, having prior knowledge that the last 99 flips have been heads has NO bearing on the odds or probability of my 100th flip. They are completely separate events.

I think the one thing we can agree on is that combinatorics and probability are the worst though.

Jon Jordan wrote:

Ok, the hell with your odds. Some famous person once said “The lottery is a tax on people who are really bad at math.”

With that said, I think you could increase your overall chance to win by making the following wager.

There are 26 Powerballs to choose from. You must have the Powerball to win the jackpot. Playing at least one ticket for each of the 26 Powerballs will at least get you in the right time zone. So, for $52 you can guarantee winning at least $2 back. And have at least one shot at the whole can of beans.

The first point is true lol, but I’m not so sure about the second one.

probability of having a matching ticket = (probability of white balls matching) * (probability of powerball matching).

You’ve essentially purposefully bought 25 losing tickets. You will have one ticket that matches the powerball, the odds of that ticket hitting is 1 in 69 choose 5(69 choose 5 is the number of possible combinations of 5 numbers ranging from 1 to 69. 1,2,3,4,5 ; 1,2,3,4,6; ,1,2,3,4,7 ; all the way up to 65, 66, 67, 68, 69) = 1:11,238,513, probability = 1 / 11238513 = .000000089.

If you buy 26 random tickets you actually give yourself a chance of having more than one ticket with the correct powerball(of course you run the risk of having 0 tickets with the right powerball). Now we have a lot more possible outcomes though since we have to worry about the powerball(26 more to be exact). So our odds are:
26 : 11,238,513*26 = 26 : 292,201,338.

What’s the probability? 26 / 292,201,338 = .000000089.

Uh oh, it’s the same!

What if we bought 26 tickets with the SAME powerball? That’d be pretty dumb right? What if the powerball is wrong?

probability of winning = (probability of white balls matching) * (probability of powerball matching).

probability of white balls matching is : (.000000089)*26(we have 26 chances)
probability of powerball matching is: 1/26

=== .000000089

No matter what ‘strategy’ you have, if you buy 26 tickets(as long as you don’t buy a duplicate ticket) you’re probability of winning remains the same!

big_g wrote:

no, them playing only increases their chance of winning, it does not affect your chance for losing or winning. Unlike a raffle, there is never a guarantee that the prize will even go out.

False… you clearly didn’t read my post

You would only be right if after the drawing and no one won they decided to keep all the money. Or if we were talking about winning on one specific night. We are talking about someone winning the Powerball period. Someone is guaranteed to win eventually.

Like I said if I was the only one to buy a ticket night after night I would be guaranteed to win.

I don’t ever play though, so my odds are zero. Good luck to everyone playing! I hope someone from MN wins.

Joe Scegura wrote:

Like I said if I was the only one to buy a ticket night after night I would be guaranteed to win.

False. You would be the only person with a CHANCE of winning, but you’d be far from guaranteed. If there was a drawing every day and you were the only person to play every day for the next 25 years, your probability of winning would be:

365 * 25 = 9125 entries. Each entry has a failure probability of 292,201,337 / 292,201,338. So, your chance of having 9125 straight failures is:

(292,201,337 / 292,201,338) ^ 9125 = 0.99996877201.

Reverse that to get your probability of winning, 1 – 0.99996877201 =

.00003122799 % chance, FAR from guaranteed.

False, you clearly did not comprehend my post… with your strategy, why wouldn’t you be buying a lottery ticket every night, if you are guaranteed to eventually win ? (you are not, as I said, there is no guarantee it will go out) Somebody else winning, should have “zero” to do with your strategy that “eventually you will win”… like you said if no one won, they don’t keep all the money and if someone does win, there is always another Jackpot behind it….

PS, I ran my posts by someone who has a masters in statistics.

OK, so having read this thread up to this point, I think there’s an obvious question that MUST be answered because it’s on everybody’s mind. All you smartypants math wizards get your pencils out. Here it goes.

If a train leaves Minneapolis heading west at 67.9 MPH carrying the entire Minnesota Vikings team and coaching staff, how long would it take before that train slams into an eastbound train that left from Seattle traveling at 78.5 MPH with Blair Walsh strapped to the front of the engine? And where (geographically speaking) would the collision occur?

As usual, you must show your work to receive full credit.

Grouse

Ok Ok I see where you are coming from. I just figured if someone else increased their odds of winning by buying a bunch of tickets tonight then the odds that the money would be there in the next drawing for me to win would be less. Hence decreasing my odds of winning the money in this jackpot.

Oh and yes someone WILL win eventually. That’s just fact.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

OK, so having read this thread up to this point, I think there’s an obvious question that MUST be answered because it’s on everybody’s mind. All you smartypants math wizards get your pencils out. Here it goes.

If a train leaves Minneapolis heading west at 67.9 MPH carrying the entire Minnesota Vikings team and coaching staff, how long would it take before that train slams into an eastbound train that left from Seattle traveling at 78.5 MPH with Blair Walsh strapped to the front of the engine? And where (geographically speaking) would the collision occur?

As usual, you must show your work to receive full credit.

Grouse

Trick question, our train would veer left at the last second and miss the Seattle train completely.

Seattle LOVES Blair Walsh right now… trick question… he would be strapped to the Viking train… but no way would it collide with another train, as they will derail as usual….

(someone will eventually win, but the scenario of 1 person buying 1 ticket a day… has virtually insurmountable odds)

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

OK, so having read this thread up to this point, I think there’s an obvious question that MUST be answered because it’s on everybody’s mind. All you smartypants math wizards get your pencils out. Here it goes.

If a train leaves Minneapolis heading west at 67.9 MPH carrying the entire Minnesota Vikings team and coaching staff, how long would it take before that train slams into an eastbound train that left from Seattle traveling at 78.5 MPH with Blair Walsh strapped to the front of the engine? And where (geographically speaking) would the collision occur?

As usual, you must show your work to receive full credit.

Grouse

well grouse if these two trains were in fact moving at those same velocities with no stops or slowing down or speeding up it would take 9.503 hours for these two trains to meet. that puts the trains around 645 miles from each of their respective starting points which means Blaire Walsh will be pretty flat somewhere north of bozeman montana (its been way too long since ive taken physics ) also this assumes a straight line.

Oh almost forgot the work.

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Steve Root wrote:

So, many years ago…..
Minnesota had just started participating in the lottery. Around Christmas time my Mother gave all of us scratch-off game tickets. My wife scratched at her ticket and announced, “Oh, I have a winner!”

A certain little read headed daughter who’s name I will not mention jumped up Like a shot, raised her fists in the air and started to shout “WE’RE RICH! WE’RE RICH!!”.

We had to explain that sometimes you win $2.00.

SR

Hey I guess I thought when you won you won it all!

Wait, are you telling me that I’m older than the MN lottery??

Wait, are you telling me that I’m older than the MN lottery??

You’re screwed Steve.

Sharon,
I just saw on the morning news that the lunch ladies from the buffalo MN school district won $50,000 last week. Well worth the $2. You can’t win if your not in.

My math on page 3 was completely on crack.

It may have had some accuracy if you were standing in front of 292+ million doors and making your guesses one-by-one. Obviously, the lottery isn’t played that way. You make your choices before the event takes place. If you placed bets on half the possible outcomes you’d have a 146M:292M chance of winning (50%) instead of 1:146M.

puddlepounder wrote:

Sharon,
I just saw on the morning news that the lunch ladies from the buffalo MN school district won $50,000 last week. Well worth the $2. You can’t win if your not in.

That’s the rub. While buying 1 ticket or 10 in a pool, both sets of odds are virtually zero.

So why bother? Insurance. When there is an office pool you should be obligated to spend $2 as insurance. Insurance to make sure that you are not the last person left in the office when the rest of them are able to retire. At that rate, $2 is a bargain.

In my situation, my coworkers jumped into a second pool. I really didn’t want to do two pools but an extra $2 was cheap insurance that I wouldn’t be the last person left in the office. The reality is that it was $4 that I will never see again. And now $8 that I will never see again when we reloaded each pool.

mossydan wrote:

With two people winning with the same numbers and splitting the lottery at 50% I know its by chance, but it still begs the question of whats the mathematical odds of that happening, is it odds or is it strictly by chance. Does the odds question have to do with some other comparison or Is the odds question relative to the 50-50 win.

That question is based on the number of tickets sold tied into the total odds.

Here is a great read without having to go into the math, including probablility graphs of multiple tickets based on pot size.
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-when-math-says-you-should-start-to-care-about-powerball-2013-9

In a nutshell, the article explains, it is better to pool your money and buy more tickets during larger drawings than to buy a single ticket every drawing.