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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?

#141

Post by Wingman4l7 »

WA wrote: post #122
maxerickson wrote: post #10

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.

This image removed any temptation for gambling once and for all, because after all, a 1:292,201,338 chance really isn't anything one can grasp easily: A car goes from San Diego to New Orleans and the driver throws a quarter out of his window at some point in time. Now you drive the same route. You get the chance to stop once on this route. If your front tire comes to a halt at the exact same spot of that quarter, you…

Is the concept to map the distance of the route to the width of the quarter? 1 inch diameter quarter, ~1800 mile route (1.1405e+8 inches) -- off by one order of magnitude... nitpick aside, very clever visual depiction, and easy enough to explain the math. I'll have to remember this one.

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

#142

Post by Wingman4l7 »

woobar wrote: post #125
dreaminvm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would not work unless it ballooned into 10 figures. Lump sum taxes would take most of the gains away and that assumes you are the only winner.

And the advertised Jackpot isa 30 years annuity. The lump sum is ~62% of the advertised Jackpot before taxes.

Used to be, the lump sum wasn't offered -- you had to sell your legal rights to the annuity to an investor to get it. You could still do this -- perhaps have open bidding on it; might net more than 62%.

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

#143

Post by Wingman4l7 »

charlieflowers wrote: post #140

I clicked "play $100" 4 times and lost. So I clicked "bet paycheck" and entered $10,000 (no I don't really make that much). And boom, I won $1,000,000. So I guess I should start playing the lottery? (I suspect there's a bug).

No bug -- I've put $15,000 through it and only netted a tenth of that.

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

#144

Post by kamaal »

WA wrote: post #122
maxerickson wrote: post #10

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.

This image removed any temptation for gambling once and for all, because after all, a 1:292,201,338 chance really isn't anything one can grasp easily: A car goes from San Diego to New Orleans and the driver throws a quarter out of his window at some point in time. Now you drive the same route. You get the chance to stop once on this route. If your front tire comes to a halt at the exact same spot of that quarter, you…

Very likely if 292,201,338 took the challenge.

People do win lotteries at times, don't they?

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

#145

Post by cbhl »

vorotato wrote: post #129
aetherson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which is some bullshit. I mean, they cheated. Yes, it is mathematically provable that a random walk will eventually touch 0. That would be the case even if the lottery was strongly positive expected value. They ask you to comment if you won. Their program guarantees you lose when it terminates -- even if you hit the 1:292,000,000 odds.

That's not true. 1) The title is can you win 800 million in powerball. If you passed 800 million, you win congratulations you did it. 2) It can be impossible to reach 0 even with a random walk.

I think you want to be more precise about "impossible".

It is not mathematically provable that a random walk of finite length will eventually touch 0. Proof by counterexample: the set of every walk of length 1 where you win the jackpot on your first try.

However, consider an infinite random walk. You can fix the first n values of the walk to win the jackpot as much as you want, but as the random walk progresses toward infinity, it is highly probable that you will be on a random walk that tends toward negative infinity. (You might have to play a lot; $437 million of $3 tickets would probably be enough tickets to play powerball for a few lifetimes.)

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

#146

Post by s73v3r »

jholman wrote: post #100
QuotedForTruth wrote: post #31

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…

It's true that if you play all your tickets in one drawing, you have a higher chance of winning the jackpot at least once, especially as your number of tickets approaches the number of total tickets. However, your expected value does not go up, because you lose the chance of winning the jackpot more than once. For an extreme example, consider a lottery with only one number, selected from 1 to 2, costing $1 per ticket…

Shouldn't it stop once you've hit the jackpot? At least until it goes up again? I'd imagine once you've one $800 million, you're not going to be interested in the $40 million reset jackpot.

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

#147

Post by s73v3r »

dsl wrote: post #87
worried_citizen wrote: post #76

I recently purchased a OneRNG trng and decided to give it a chance at guessing the right number with its quantum-noise super powers. Reading from it overnight produced 24 million guesses and no winner. Though several were just one number off. Too bad so sad. I'm really curious what RNG the registers use when people say "let the computer guess for me". I'm pretty sure they don't all have a TRNG installed on the circui…

"Quick Pick" numbers are not generated at the store. Regardless of if you pick the numbers or let the computer do it, your request is sent in real time back to a lotto office where the real ticket is securely generated (with a TRNG if you so choose). The local terminal then receives a bitmap to print out.

Funny that they allow multiple people to pick the same numbers, then.

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

#148

Post by s73v3r »

mulmen wrote: post #107
worried_citizen wrote: post #76

I recently purchased a OneRNG trng and decided to give it a chance at guessing the right number with its quantum-noise super powers. Reading from it overnight produced 24 million guesses and no winner. Though several were just one number off. Too bad so sad. I'm really curious what RNG the registers use when people say "let the computer guess for me". I'm pretty sure they don't all have a TRNG installed on the circui…

Is there reason to believe that a TRNG would somehow select numbers with a better chance of winning than any other method? I can see the method impacting the number of dollars you win but surely any valid set of numbers has the same chance to win as any other. It's not like your TRNG is actually emulating the behavior of the balls in the machine.

No, but I don't have to blame myself for having stupid numbers when I lose :p

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

#149

Post by santaclause33 »

charlieflowers wrote: post #140

I clicked "play $100" 4 times and lost. So I clicked "bet paycheck" and entered $10,000 (no I don't really make that much). And boom, I won $1,000,000. So I guess I should start playing the lottery? (I suspect there's a bug).

I am in the hole 250k

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

#150

Post by zem »

jaynos wrote: post #68
jdhawk wrote: 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.

i wouldn't take a lottery ticket if you gave it to me for free, but i'd happily join an office pool. for me, the worst part about lotteries is the mental effort required to hang on to and track a ticket; it's sort of the opposite of the entertainment effect that people talk about. but if i could contribute some token amount of money to a social bonding endeavour, and as a bonus fund the entertainment of people who do enjoy keeping track of lottery tickets, and maybe magically have money appear without my having had to do anything for it, it would be worth it.
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