51–60 of 60 posts
I don't think it is a given that every lottery can be hacked. I would also like to recommend this PG essay: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/02/statistician-crack...
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Are you considering doing card counting (enter a shop, watch people buy and scratch cards, and start buying after a large streak of non-winning cards)? Otherwise, I do not see what that information (if it is true) would give you.
i believe the point is that the there is a pattern to the distribution. we can only safely assume the pattern is on a micro level, but it would suggest there are larger patterns at play. for instance, is it possible to ship 5 rolls with million dollar winnings to the same store in a week? maybe the answer is yes, but i imagine there's a reason to prevent this. in case it's not clear i am just guessing. i don't really…
That, I do not see. If there are some guarantees as to having guaranteed prices per roll, one can see the lottery as the sum of small, per-roll lotteries, possibly combined with a larger one to distribute the truly large prices. There is no reason to assume that those per-roll lotteries will be correlated in some way.
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The problem is calling the lottery an investment. To me, at least, it's not. I buy maybe 10 a year, just for the hell of it and the "never know" factor, but I am never pulling my hair out at my so far horrible "investment decisions." You can look at the $10 as being 2-3 Starbucks coffees
You don't even count. You're not playing the lottery any more than I am by picking up a ticket I found off the street. Just go to your local grocery store or gas station and stand next to the machine or cash register for just 30 minutes and watch the guys that buy a ticket. They're all regulars. They're all putting their hope (even if they tell themselves they're not) in this ticket being the winning ticket. They're…
There's another story you have to read: The luckiest woman on earth: Three ways to win the lottery ( http://harpers.org/archive/2011/08/0083561 ). It's for subscribers only, but it's far more interesting than the Jonah Lehrer piece. It's about a woman who's won the lottery (scratch tickets) 3 or 4 times, winning millions each time. It's been a while since I read it, but as far as I recall, one of the hypotheses about…
I find it disturbing that some poeple find it so hard to belive that it might just be chance. It's way more likely to be that. The serial number on the cards are either generated in series (1, 2, 3 ...) or just pseudorandom, but they are not tied to any winnings, it's just a series of numbers so that they can keep track of what goes where. If it's a serie of numbers you have to find out what the chances of a winning…
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Also: Can we really call this a "regressive tax" like the Wired article states? There is no obligation to play the game. You are obligated to pay taxes. Numbers games (lotteries) are run by governments now because organized crime was running them in inner cities. People still played then. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game At least the "tax" from lottery proceeds often goes to benefit social goo…
Calling state lotteries a regressive tax highlights the irony of the socioeconomic system. The non-lottery-playing cohort tends to have more political control and uses that power (unconsciously, perhaps) to structure the market to induce lottery-playing behavior among the poorer cohort. In other words, there are varying methods of obligation.
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You don't even count. You're not playing the lottery any more than I am by picking up a ticket I found off the street. Just go to your local grocery store or gas station and stand next to the machine or cash register for just 30 minutes and watch the guys that buy a ticket. They're all regulars. They're all putting their hope (even if they tell themselves they're not) in this ticket being the winning ticket. They're…
Reminds me that long ago I wanted to start a list of better investments for 1€/$. Can't remember much, but one idea was to write a love letter to a millionaire. Any other ideas?
Make that $10 instead of $1 and open a "mini mutual fund" that angel invests in high risk things like new companies. $10 per "share", 100 people is a $1000 which isn't too bad of an investment to put into a local computer repair business or something.
I don't know about the legalities of something like this, though.
But if your goal is to get the people buying lottery tickets to buy yours instead, that's not going to happen. If you tell them there's a 1 in 10 chance that their money will be doubled in six months or a 1 in a million chance that they'll win the jackpot overnight, these are people that'll go for the latter every time.
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Reminds me that long ago I wanted to start a list of better investments for 1€/$. Can't remember much, but one idea was to write a love letter to a millionaire. Any other ideas?
Honestly the best investment is to set it aside in a penny jar until you have a more reasonable amount that you can make more money with. Make that $10 instead of $1 and open a "mini mutual fund" that angel invests in high risk things like new companies. $10 per "share", 100 people is a $1000 which isn't too bad of an investment to put into a local computer repair business or something. I don't know about the legalit…
On the other hand I am not even sure if lotto is really such a bad investment. I know the expected value is negative, but there is a chance to become a millionaire after all. If spending 1$ doesn't hurt you much, might be worth a try?
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There is something to this. I had to do some training years ago at Alberta Lottery in Canada. Scratch tickets are sold in blocks of $100 (100 x $1, 50 x $2, etc). We were told that each pack contains at least one winning ticket (it might be $5 or it might be $100K). That's a definite weakness.
Are you considering doing card counting (enter a shop, watch people buy and scratch cards, and start buying after a large streak of non-winning cards)? Otherwise, I do not see what that information (if it is true) would give you.
Obviously not something a person who didn't have the ability to monitor the purchases could do.
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Yes, Martingale's doesn't raise your expected value above zero/negative for any games of chance. Towards infinity, it won't change your outcome -- you will still eventually loose all your money. If you factor in the times the player went bankrupt, your win percent probably won't look so hot.
Though it did (in the simulation). The accumulated winnings with the limits on bankrupt and cashing out at 1500 created a over time win percentage in a otherwise negative-biased game?
The famous MIT black jack team was able to 'take down the casino' by counting cards and waiting for expected value to swing positive, and then placing large bets at that time. If the game is truly random and negative (like all well-constructed casino games should be) then there should never been an opportunity for positive expected value.