Lottery tickets?!

[DaveC426913]

No, another bucket of water in the ocean is not a significant increase.

Faulty analogy.

You're counting oceans. In a lottery, you're counting the buckets.

 

[sideshowbob]

Faulty analogy.

You're counting oceans. In a lottery, you're counting the buckets.

It's the same thing. The increase is too tiny to be significant.

 

[gmilam]

My "ex" once told me that she spent 10 dollars on Lotto. One of those cards paid off 5 dollars. As far as I was concerned, she was down 5 dollars. In her "logic", she had won 5!

She's the same lady who had a "system" for picking lottery numbers based on which numbers were "hot" and which ones were "due". I asked her why she didn't just bet on 1,2,3,4,5. Her response... "Do you know what the odds are of those numbers being picked?" (Yes, I do. The exact same as any other pre-selected set of 5 numbers.)

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

See, I figure the other way around makes more sense.

It's not as if "only" winning 2 million - as opposed to 100 - is anticlimactic. Any large amount is going to change your life.
So, given a choice between
- "a stupid amount of money with a miniscule chance of winning", and
- "a stupid amount of money with a larger chance of winning"
why not go for the larger chance?

Well, for one, I'm too old to get to the casinos (we have 3-4 here in St. Loser). AND I know players bleed to death slowly there. But buy a lottery ticket when I stop for gas, that's no big deal.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Sure it does. Doubling the number of tickets doubles your chances. That's a significant increase.

But it doesn't result in a significant chance of winning the jackpot.

"Buying more lottery tickets does increase your chances of winning the lottery. In Powerball, there are 292,201,338 possible tickets. Buy one ticket, and you have a one in 292,201,338 chance of winning the jackpot. Buy two tickets, you have a two in 292,201,338 chance.Mar 21, 2019"
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-lottery-tickets-2016-1

 

[Michael 345]

Lotteries are almost the equivalent of getting a large amount of money for almost nothing

Unfortunately most of that almost nothing you spend for the ticket goes elsewhere and if you keep buying, almost nothing becomes a tidy sum

The people who run the lotteries are the geniuses

Use other people's money as a prize = no outlay of your own

Take a cut for selling dreams

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Part of the income here goes to the school system. I'm good with that. Otherwise it's just discretionary funds. I have all the toys I'll ever need. My collection of scotch is impressive.