Beating the Odds
The odds of winning at Powerball are 1 in 146,107,962; that's 0.000068 percent. This means if you buy a ticket, the odds of someone who didn't buy a ticket lucking up and finding the winning lottery ticket are very close to your odds of winning, because the difference between your odds of winning and their odds of finding the winner is less than one millionth of a percent.
If you bought 500 tickets every week for the next fifty years, your chances of winning the lottery are still less than one percent - and you have spent $1.3 million trying.
You are more likely to be struck by lightning 253 times than you are to win the lottery from a single ticket.
You are 1,660 times more likely to date a supermodel than you are to win the lottery. (Okay, I take exception to this one, as I figure -- even at 1 in 146,107,962 -- I'm much more likely to win the lottery than date a supermodel, because I asked SWMBO and dating the supermodel is out (parenthetically dropping down another level, no, I didn't ask a supermodel, but I figured that'd be a piece of cake compared to getting SWMBO to go along.).)
Over the next fifty years if you buy two Powerball tickets each week (one per drawing), the earth is five times more likely to experience a catastrophic collision with an asteroid over that fifty years than you are to win the lottery.
But what the heck, somebody's gotta win; buy a ticket.
If you bought 500 tickets every week for the next fifty years, your chances of winning the lottery are still less than one percent - and you have spent $1.3 million trying.
You are more likely to be struck by lightning 253 times than you are to win the lottery from a single ticket.
You are 1,660 times more likely to date a supermodel than you are to win the lottery. (Okay, I take exception to this one, as I figure -- even at 1 in 146,107,962 -- I'm much more likely to win the lottery than date a supermodel, because I asked SWMBO and dating the supermodel is out (parenthetically dropping down another level, no, I didn't ask a supermodel, but I figured that'd be a piece of cake compared to getting SWMBO to go along.).)
Over the next fifty years if you buy two Powerball tickets each week (one per drawing), the earth is five times more likely to experience a catastrophic collision with an asteroid over that fifty years than you are to win the lottery.
But what the heck, somebody's gotta win; buy a ticket.
posted by Rick at 11:16 PM
3 Comments:
so what your saying is.......there's IS a chance, right?!
This is off topic, but I couldn't find a place to put it.
Have you ever been to that International Checkers Hall of Fame in . . . where is it? Petal, MS?
I remember stopping there as a child on our long wind to Florida one summer, and playing checkers with the giant checkers pillows on the checkered floor.
Is it still there?
While I've been to Pearl, I've never been to the International Checkers Hall of Fame, but per the Petal (near Pearl, and where the HoF is located) Chamber of Commerce it is still there.
Rick
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