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I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

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Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#81

Post by njharman »

WA wrote: post #27

"The odds against winning the big prize are 45,379,619:1" I have a hard time imagining how low these odds are but once my math professor gave us an interesting analogy. One person drives from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and throws a quarter out of the window at any point in time. You then follow this person along the same route. You win the grand price if you manage to stop your car such that your front wheel stops at t…

This analogy reinforces why people should and do (incl author) play the lottery. A nice roadtrip through the country, entertainment. If you happen to stop and find a quarter, bonus!

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#82

Post by emmett »

ced wrote: post #78
brianwillis wrote: post #11

Looking back, there seems to be a correlation between the times in my life when I've bought lottery tickets, and the times in my life when I've felt hopeless. If I ever feel trapped by circumstances, depressed, lost, or I don't have optimism for the future, the less logical part of my brain will somehow rationalise the remote chance of winning millions as a perfectly justified excuse for buying a ticket. The author o…

Evolution is often all-or-nothing --- no one produces "half a child". This is especially true of men, if you believe the 40-80 figure [1]: 40% of men have descendants vs 80% for women. We are the descendants of A) successful people [2] and B) unsuccessful people who took a big gamble (winning the lottery; robbing a bank; crossing the ocean to find better opportunities) that made them wealthy enough to reproduce. [1]…

Actually people have "half a child" all the time. Every time a sibling reproduces, for example, that's half a child.

So there's a perfectly viable strategy of helping your siblings have more children instead of having more children yourself. If you can create more than 2 successful sibling-children for every child you don't have, your inclusive genetic fitness is increased.

This doesn't mean your conclusion (people gamble! men gamble more than women!) is wrong, but your line of reasoning is.

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#83

Post by philh »

corin_ wrote: post #42
paulsutter wrote: post #16

Insurance has an interesting comparison to lottery tickets. In a lottery ticket, the expected return is usually about 50%. Which is exactly the same as insurance (the premium is about double the expected payout). Yet people regard insurance as prudent, and lottery tickets as foolish. Me included (as long as its a risk you cant easily cover). But our explanation, that "Lottery tickets are foolish because they have a n…

An interesting addition to other replies to your comment is that the word "insurance" has come to be thought of as a good, safe thing by people (I'm not saying it shouldn't have). In blackjack there's a bet called Insurance which you can make if you have blackjack (21 in two cards) and the dealer has an ace. Essentially it's a bet that pays 2-1 if the dealer's second card is a ten/face, the odds of which are 4/13, ma…

> the odds of which are 4/13

Actually slightly lower, 15/49. (The difference is like 0.15%.)

(I mainly mention this because I used to think my odds of drawing to a flush in poker were 1/4 per draw. It took me embarassingly long to realise that I needed to remove the cards I could see from the deck.)

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#84

Post by androsynth89 »

Funny that he started the article seeming like he was going to show using math that the lottery was a good investment idea, when in fact it isn't according to his own estimation.

As to the entertainment value of dreaming that you've won the lottery, obviously nobody should be told they CAN'T enter. But what some call a dream I call self-delusion. We have a pervasive idea in this country that we're all going to become rich eventually and it's simply not true.

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#85

Post by corin_ »

philh wrote: post #83
corin_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting addition to other replies to your comment is that the word "insurance" has come to be thought of as a good, safe thing by people (I'm not saying it shouldn't have). In blackjack there's a bet called Insurance which you can make if you have blackjack (21 in two cards) and the dealer has an ace. Essentially it's a bet that pays 2-1 if the dealer's second card is a ten/face, the odds of which are 4/13, ma…

> the odds of which are 4/13 Actually slightly lower, 15/49. (The difference is like 0.15%.) (I mainly mention this because I used to think my odds of drawing to a flush in poker were 1/4 per draw. It took me embarassingly long to realise that I needed to remove the cards I could see from the deck.)

While you're right that 4/13 is simplistic, 15/49 complicates it without actually making it more accurate. Even if there are no other players, there will always be more than one deck in the shoe (4-8 depending on casino), plus the three cards will never be the first cards out of the shoe - so unless you're counting cards you can't work out the exact odds.

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#86

Post by philh »

Ironballs wrote: post #33

Kari Enqvist, a professor of cosmology, said something very insightful in an interview about gambling in general: "Insurances yield a peace of mind and lotteries yield dreams, the values of which cannot be measured in mere terms of probabilities or money." In my view, lottery tickets are not meant to be rationally justifiable, nor should they be required to be. Yet, I don't fancy the idea of committing to such vain p…

> the values of which cannot be measured in mere terms of probabilities or money.

Sure they can. I'll pay $X for insurance but I won't pay $Y. Peace of mind is worth somewhere between $X and $Y to me. If I offer someone $Z to never play the lottery again, they'll either take it or not. If they take it, they valued those particular dreams less than $Z. (Unless $Z is high enough to fulfill some of those dreams, but I suspect many people would accept a $Z which is not so high.)

There's no simple trade-off where I'll always accept some number of units of money for some number of units of peace of mind; but the same is true of cars.

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#87

Post by philh »

corin_ wrote: post #85
philh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the odds of which are 4/13 Actually slightly lower, 15/49. (The difference is like 0.15%.) (I mainly mention this because I used to think my odds of drawing to a flush in poker were 1/4 per draw. It took me embarassingly long to realise that I needed to remove the cards I could see from the deck.)

While you're right that 4/13 is simplistic, 15/49 complicates it without actually making it more accurate. Even if there are no other players, there will always be more than one deck in the shoe (4-8 depending on casino), plus the three cards will never be the first cards out of the shoe - so unless you're counting cards you can't work out the exact odds.

> Even if there are no other players, there will always be more than one deck in the shoe

I hadn't realised this, thanks.

> the three cards will never be the first cards out of the shoe

Does this matter? I'm using a model of "the dealer's other card is equally likely to be any of the cards except the two I have and his face-up one", and it doesn't matter where those three were originally. The model can be improved by counting cards, but it's still strictly (albiet very slightly) more accurate than the model of "the dealer's other card is equally likely to be any of the cards in the deck/shoe".

But perhaps there's something else about Blackjack that I'm not aware of?

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#88

Post by jrs235 »

lotto wrote: post #46

I won the UK National Lottery jackpot as part of a syndicate. Two years later, I won it again on my own. The wins have had two effects on how I evaluate odds: first, so-called 'remote' probabilities I once found reassuring – the odds of being hit by lightning in your lifetime is 1 in 10,000 or the chances of being killed in a train crash are 1 in 500,000 – no longer have a calming effect. This can make me both nervou…

Except the odds of you winning again are no less than any other person winning since your previous wins are unrelated.

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#89

Post by corin_ »

philh wrote: post #87
corin_ wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you're right that 4/13 is simplistic, 15/49 complicates it without actually making it more accurate. Even if there are no other players, there will always be more than one deck in the shoe (4-8 depending on casino), plus the three cards will never be the first cards out of the shoe - so unless you're counting cards you can't work out the exact odds.

> Even if there are no other players, there will always be more than one deck in the shoe I hadn't realised this, thanks. > the three cards will never be the first cards out of the shoe Does this matter? I'm using a model of "the dealer's other card is equally likely to be any of the cards except the two I have and his face-up one", and it doesn't matter where those three were originally. The model can be improved by…

Let's imagine using just one deck. Your odds of 15/49 could easily be 12/45, or 15/20, depending on what cards have come before it.

Re: I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets

#90

Post by philh »

corin_ wrote: post #89
philh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if there are no other players, there will always be more than one deck in the shoe I hadn't realised this, thanks. > the three cards will never be the first cards out of the shoe Does this matter? I'm using a model of "the dealer's other card is equally likely to be any of the cards except the two I have and his face-up one", and it doesn't matter where those three were originally. The model can be improved by…

Let's imagine using just one deck. Your odds of 15/49 could easily be 12/45, or 15/20, depending on what cards have come before it.

Well, yes. But if you're not keeping track of that, then always using 15/49 will give you marginally better results, on average, than always using 4/13. Perhaps there will be times where, if you had kept track of the cards, you would give odds of 4/13; but you didn't, so you don't know that's the case, and you should give 15/49.

You're correct about your other objections, and 15/49 is indeed harder to work with - but "without actually making it more accurate" is false under the one-deck assumption. It is not wholly accurate, but it is more accurate.

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