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Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

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Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#61
post #27
post #18

The obvious equivalent for the HN crowd: "Here is $50k. Now quit your job and start a start-up" Difficulty bonus -- startup idea is generated by a Markov chain and could be anything -- "Uber for dogs", "Taxidermied pets as drones" etc.

Lottery as a service

May be peer to peer lottery tickets as service. I have heard friends/colleagues used potlucked money to buy tickets and if they win share the prize. Have a service for it with nice Web 2.0ish dashboard :P

Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#62
post #37
post #18

The obvious equivalent for the HN crowd: "Here is $50k. Now quit your job and start a start-up" Difficulty bonus -- startup idea is generated by a Markov chain and could be anything -- "Uber for dogs", "Taxidermied pets as drones" etc.

1. The odds of succeeding at a startup are a lot better than 292 million to 1. 2. You get a paycheck, even if it's less than market rate. 3. It's fun and exciting to use someone else's money to try to come up with a new business type.

People often spend months or more on their own before they can raise external funding, become profitable or give up.

Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not exactly the same but its pretty close when the chances are so low anyways. Playing 10,000 times in 1 drawing gives you the probability of winning the jackpot: 0.00003422297813=10000/292201338 Playing 10,000 times in 10,000 drawings gives you the probability of winning the jackpot: 0.00003422239258=1-((292201338-1)/292201338)^10000 The difference gets more significant if you play more. For 10 million plays its…

If you play quickdraw you could get the same numbers twice. I think with that caveat the odds should be the same.

To be fair, wouldn't the odds of QuickDraw picking the same numbers twice (even if there weren't a built in limit against that) be the same odds as winning the jackpot in the first place?

Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#64
post #16

I think most of us realize that they're not going to win, but when the jackpot becomes a national event every 6 months or whatever, there's usually some joy in buying a ticket anyway

There's more joy in giving $2 to a person who needs it.

why not both

Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#65

This is a fascinating sentence: While the large jackpot prize may be tempting, it's extremely hard to have that one ticket in 292 million. I think my favorite part is that extremely hard isn't a very accurate description of how unlikely it is.

To put it into perspective, a bookmaker in the UK offered odds of 14 million to 1 for Elvis Presley crash landing in a UFO on top of the Loch Ness monster[0].

[0] A quick Google returns a number of sources, but I'm going to use this one: http://www.elvisnews.com/news.aspx/gamblers-give-up-on-elvis...

Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#66
post #51
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lottery as a service

Get a $1 lottery ticket mailed to you in a nice cardboard box every month for only $11 dollars a year.

Pretty sure this would be illegal, but as a resident of a state where I cannot buy a lottery ticket, I'll buy.

Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#68
post #43

Buy a $2 ticket for entertainment, not "investment." Spend 10 minutes imagining what you'd do with $496M. It might be fun.

Join lottery pool at work. Might lose $2, but won't have to kill myself if everyone at the office wins and I have to show up everyday remembering that fact.

Re: Here’s $100. Can you win $800M at Powerball?

#69
post #16

I think most of us realize that they're not going to win, but when the jackpot becomes a national event every 6 months or whatever, there's usually some joy in buying a ticket anyway

There's more joy in giving $2 to a person who needs it.

For you.
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