zelticgar Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 I need help from a math nerd. I read somewhere that the odds of winning the Powerball is 293 million to 1. I just did an office pool with 7 other people which is getting us 80 numbers! Now what are my odds? I think I'm up to 4 to 1 but I want to confirm? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The guy from the Vale Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 I'd definitely qualify as a math nerd, but I don't know the rules of Powerball. That said, I'm pretty sure your chances have just increased by a factor of about 8 (8 players instead of 1). So you'd still be 30 million to 1 outsiders.That being said, lotteries are almost always massive scams. It'd be a better idea to take the money you've collected, go to the next casino (so, in your case, Atlantic City?), play Roulette for one round and either take the earnings or leave. You'd be far better off on average after doing that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greywolf2375 Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 I need help from a math nerd. I read somewhere that the odds of winning the Powerball is 293 million to 1. I just did an office pool with 7 other people which is getting us 80 numbers! Now what are my odds? I think I'm up to 4 to 1 but I want to confirm? Thanks!Please don't do that. Someone on here a year or two ago was actually serious about buying something like 150 tickets and having something like a 1 in 2 chance of winning. It still makes my head hurt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Your odds will go up even more if you start murdering other people who are participating and taking their tickets! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NestorMakhnosLovechild Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Your odds will go up even more if you start murdering other people who are participating and taking their tickets!Questionable. This depends entirely on whether or not they've signed their tickets already, or how skilled you are at wearing their skin and impersonating them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liffguard Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 It depends which numbers you picked. Odd numbers are notorious for being more shy and retiring than even numbers and don't like to show themselves (hence "odd"), therefore they get picked less. The obvious exceptions are prime numbers which, being so special and unique, have an assertive and outgoing attitude and thus are more likely to come up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Which Tyler Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 You can't improve your odds of winning (per ticket).However, you CAN improve you odds of not sharing the win - by playing with human nature. Humans are pattern freaks, and mentally insist that random numbers would have to look random, so hate putting something that looks artificial in there - like a sequence of numbers.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is just as likely to win as any other combination.However, there are plenty of clever-dicks out there, so don't go for that, if it ever comes up the win will be split by a couple of thousand people! Equally, straight runs of 6 numbers will be shared by a few others as they try to game that part of the system. Equally, humans are superstitious and love putting things like Birthdays / Anniversaries / Childrens' ages etc down; so avoid numbers that are likely to coincide - basically anything below 31 to get away from dates. So you can significantly reduce your chance of sharing the prize by using a run of numbers (but not all 6); and by avoiding numbers below 31. However, by far the best way of winning at the lottery, is to buy shares in the company that runs the damned thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Stone Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Your best bet is to spend 584 million and buy every single number combination. Sure the logistics are rough, but nothing in life is easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iskaral Pust Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 I thought Zelt's OP joke was too far-fetched but a quick Google search shows some pretty ridiculous theories on how to supposedly reduce the odds of winning. A country that loves to watch poker on TV is surprisingly naive about odds.How greedy do you have to be to buy more than usual Powerball tickets this week? Any Powerball win makes you wealthy for the rest of your life. Is the $930m cash value this week really that much better than the (say) $200m cash value available on a typical drawing? i understand the hype around a big jackpot but not the mindset of those buying tickets. The change to the Powerball game last fall changed the jackpot odds from 175m/1 to 293m/1 specifically to reduce jackpot wins and lead to bigger jackpots. How big do jackpots need to be? Decreased expected value and decreased likelihood and frequency of fantasy-fulfilling wins should reduce demand for playing.I don't know the history of the Powerball but other major lotteries see such a big influx (new gamblers, more tickets per gambler) when the prize gets really big that the likelihood increases of more than one winning ticket, reducing the expected value of your ticket. But that's a much bigger problem for lotteries with better odds, e.g. when Ireland originally had 6 numbers drawn from 36. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liffguard Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Any Powerball win makes you wealthy for the rest of your life.You'd think so, but apparently lottery jackpot winners are significantly more likely to go bankrupt than the average member of the population. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zelticgar Posted January 13, 2016 Author Share Posted January 13, 2016 Forget it, you people have no idea how to do math. The last drawing I got two numbers in one of my quick picks. I only bought 10 quick picks that time so if I do the math =10 Quickpicks = 2 numbers were selected80 Quickpicks = 16 numbersI really only need to buy 30 quickpicks to get the 6 numbers but I'm getting 80 just in case. If you are looking for me later this week I'll be house shopping in Hawaii. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The guy from the Vale Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 You can't scale it up linearly. That's not how this works. Put another way, what you're doing will give you roughl 8 "double number" events, but those are unlikely to happen on the same ballot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maarsen Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 There is a way to maximize your odds of winning. Having a machine pick random numbers for you is not the way to go. I have no idea how many numbers there are but let us use "x". Take x balls, bottle caps or whatever and write the numbers on them up to x. Put them in a hat and draw out however many numbers are on a ticket. Put those aside and repeat for the second ticket and again for as many ticket as you have bought. You do not want random numbers as the fact of having the same numbers on different tickets decreases your odds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Pepper Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 I have no idea how to buy a lottery ticket. I asked for one at the checkout and the cashier gave me a blank stare. I know I've bought some sort of lottery tickets in the past, but I just don't remember the procedures I went through to acquire them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 I've participated in an office pool for the last 2 draws, each time we had about 74-75 tickets. Your odds are still pretty close to 0. For the Saturday draw, we didn't win one dollar. (we got 15 on the first draw).But I do believe that my odds are now improved because of the old saying "third time's the charm" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 More seriously, if the ticket costs $2, the odds are 293 million to 1, and the after-tax lump sum award (assuming no split winners) is $651 million (I think), doesn't that make the expected value of the ticket actually be a net positive? Something like $2.20 per ticket? And that's before adding in the potential value of the other drawings.Its been a really long time since I learned how to do those calculations, so I'm probably doing the math wrong. Also, even if the expected value is positive, the odds are so tiny that its still not a good investment. But maybe worth throwing $2 into, the entertainment value alone of fantasizing about winning is probably worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solmyr Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 You don't play the lottery to win money, rather it's an entertainment expense. It always saddens me when I see poor people spending money on lottery tickets, but then I remember that for most of them this is exactly the reason why they are poor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gears of the Beast Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 I need help from a math nerd. I read somewhere that the odds of winning the Powerball is 293 million to 1. I just did an office pool with 7 other people which is getting us 80 numbers! Now what are my odds? I think I'm up to 4 to 1 but I want to confirm? Thanks!Sounds like you don't understand probability...or you enjoy wasting money. In fact that must be the case for everyone who 'plays' the lottery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zelticgar Posted January 13, 2016 Author Share Posted January 13, 2016 I have no idea how to buy a lottery ticket. I asked for one at the checkout and the cashier gave me a blank stare. I know I've bought some sort of lottery tickets in the past, but I just don't remember the procedures I went through to acquire them. This was me until the last drawing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commodore Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 Fox News has you covered Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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