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$1 BILLION jackpot incoming?? Mega Millions sitting at $400 million....

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perfectchaos007 said:
Technically it does. Your odds of winning the jackpot go from 1 in ~300 million to 1 in ~150 million if you buy 2 tickets. If you buy 4 tickets, your odds are ~1 in 75 million. If you buy 16 tickets, your odds are 1 in 37.5 million etc.

Think about it on a smaller level and it makes sense. Lets say you're playing a lotto game where you pick 1 number 0-9. Your odds of winning are 1 in 10. If you buy 2 tickets your odds of winning are 1 in 5. If you buy 5 tickets, your odds of winning are 1 in 2. ( all assuming you're picking different numbers of course )
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I'm sorry but I'm 99% sure it doesn't work that way. You don't cut the odds in half by buying one extra ticket. Each ticket has a 1 in 290 million chance. So two tickets gets you a 1.0000000001 chance increase ect. I might be wrong though. :/
 
Ryan242004 said:
I'm sorry but I'm 99% sure it doesn't work that way. You don't cut the odds in half by buying one extra ticket. Each ticket has a 1 in 290 million chance. So two tickets gets you a 1.0000000001 chance increase ect. I might be wrong though. :/
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You're right. It's not going to cut the odds in half. That's why he has a Ron Paul avatar.
 
hemtae said:
I'm not getting it. It seems pretty straight forward to me that you have twice the chance to win with two tickets as opposed to one.
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This confuses me as well.

Isn't a 2:10 chance the same as a 1:5 chance? Math geniuses help me out.

edit: well..I guess I answered my own question. In a 2:10 chance you have 8 possibilities of getting the wrong number. In a 1:5 chance you only have four. So the extra chance in 2:10 isn't that much better than a 1:10; right?
 
Stopped by 7-11 to get a drink on the way home and the lady looked at me like I was a lunatic for not wanting to buy any lotto tickets.
 
So, MM is up to 636 million. Top tax bracket is about 40% so that means (assuming you're the only winner) around $380 million take home, minus state taxes. Let's just say $300M. At 5% return you'll be making a cool $15,000,000 a year without even touching the principle. I could live with that. These dumb fucks that win the lottery and spend it all within the first couple of years should have never killed their golden goose.

Edit: payout is only $341M so $204M after tax. Maybe around 8M a year interest.
 
Husker86 said:
This confuses me as well.

Isn't a 2:10 chance the same as a 1:5 chance? Math geniuses help me out.

edit: well..I guess I answered my own question. In a 2:10 chance you have 8 possibilities of getting the wrong number. In a 1:5 chance you only have four. So the extra chance in 2:10 isn't that much better than a 1:10; right?
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Pretty much, now multiply that times hundreds of millions. The extra increase becomes minuscule. It's hard to explain but multiple factor odds are a different kind of math. It's been a while since college lol. Sorry I can't explain it better.
 
The winner is always like a group of 6 dudes from a Chrysler factory
 
I'm in a group buy. Unfortunately, the one that bought them is from a state that you must legally identify yourself as a winner. (no estates, or anything of the sort). The state I actually live in, I can claime anonymous. Oh well, not like I will win anyway.
 
Angry Grimace said:
Skyrim cost $100,000,000 to make in the first place. I mean, obviously you'll make some of that money back, but if this were a good idea, they'd already have the funding, no?
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Yeah, my idea of "funding a game" would be pitching in a hefty amount to a Kickstarter I cared about, probably double dip in the Pillars of Eternity and Torment Kickstarters. Anything too big, well, just look at 38 Studios.
 
tirminyl said:
I'm in a group buy. Unfortunately, the one that bought them is from a state that you must legally identify yourself as a winner. (no estates, or anything of the sort). The state I actually live in, I can claime anonymous. Oh well, not like I will win anyway.
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Sell the ticket to some other millionaire who doesn't care for ~$100,000 less than the total payout.
 
News said only 70% of the combinations will be picked by the time of the drawing. 1 billion would be insane. And if it loses again it'd be Christmas Eve for the drawing after that...surely over 1 billion by that point.
 
What does the store that sells the ticket get? Don't they get something ridiculous as well for selling the winning ticket?
 
Inebriated said:
buying two tickets gets you a 2 in 259 million chance, it doesn't cut the 259 million in half.
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2/259mil does cut the 259mil in half when reduced. The problem people make is that they continue with that trend on all subsequent tickets, and divide the denominator by 2 for each ticket bought... which is wrong. The odds are always calculated as (number of tickets bought)/259 million.

So 8 unique tickets would be 8/259million which reduces to 1/32.4million.
 
For some reason I thought the drawing was tomorrow night, anyway I bought $20 worth, usually just buy 2 numbers but couldnt resist. Good luck GAF.
 
Ryan242004 said:
I'm sorry but I'm 99% sure it doesn't work that way. You don't cut the odds in half by buying one extra ticket. Each ticket has a 1 in 290 million chance. So two tickets gets you a 1.0000000001 chance increase ect. I might be wrong though. :/
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ezrarh said:
You're right. It's not going to cut the odds in half. That's why he has a Ron Paul avatar.
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GuitarAtomik said:
lol #dead
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Admittedly, I'm wrong about a lot of things. Many of my opinions are criticized often solely because of my avatar. But, the math I did in the post you're referring to is correct. I'm fine with people posting "lol Ron Paul" when I post an opinion that isn't popular, but in this case you're trying to disprove factual math. I even tried my best to explain it to people who can't comprehend big numbers. I guess I didn't do a good enough job at that.


Here was my post from the last page.
perfectchaos007 said:
Technically it does. Your odds of winning the jackpot go from 1 in ~300 million to 1 in ~150 million if you buy 2 tickets. If you buy 4 tickets, your odds are ~1 in 75 million. If you buy 16 tickets, your odds are 1 in 37.5 million etc.

Think about it on a smaller level and it makes sense. Lets say you're playing a lotto game where you pick 1 number 0-9. Your odds of winning are 1 in 10. If you buy 2 tickets your odds of winning are 1 in 5. If you buy 5 tickets, your odds of winning are 1 in 2. ( all assuming you're picking different numbers of course )
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\

Can someone who's strong in math without a Ron Paul avatar validate my explanation? Thanks...
 
perfectchaos007 said:
Admittedly, I'm wrong about a lot of things. Many of my opinions are criticized often solely because of my avatar. But, the math I did in the post you're referring to is correct. I'm fine with people posting "lol Ron Paul" when I post an opinion that isn't popular, but in this case you're trying to disprove factual math. I even tried my best to explain it to people who can't comprehend big numbers. I guess I didn't do a good enough job at that.


Here was my post from the last page.
\

Can someone who's strong in math without a Ron Paul avatar validate my explanation? Thanks...
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Yahoo says you're wrong:

Yahoo said:
Myth 2: Buying two lottery tickets doubles your chances of winning.

Once again, this is false. If you buy one lottery ticket in the Powerball lottery, your chance of winning is 1 in 120,526,770. If you buy two tickets, your odds are 2 in 120,526,770. You have not doubled your chance at winning the lottery; you've just decreased the odds against you by an infinitesimal amount.
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If your odds are 1 in 300 million
If you bought 2 tickets wouldnt your odds just go to 1 in 299 999 999
if you baught 3 it would now be 1 in 299 999 998

and so on.
 
perfectchaos007 said:
Admittedly, I'm wrong about a lot of things. Many of my opinions are criticized often solely because of my avatar. But, the math I did in the post you're referring to is correct. I'm fine with people posting "lol Ron Paul" when I post an opinion that isn't popular, but in this case you're trying to disprove factual math. I even tried my best to explain it to people who can't comprehend big numbers. I guess I didn't do a good enough job at that.


Here was my post from the last page.


Can someone who's strong in math without a Ron Paul avatar validate my explanation? Thanks...
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I agree with you. Your math is right except you said 16 tickets when you should have said 8 (for the 37.5 million case). People see these huge changes in the denominator for what seem to be a minor change in the number of tickets bought, which misleads them to think that the massive change trend will continue.
 
I love my dad. He made a spreadsheet thing on the computer trying to find out what numbers he should choose. He used every winning number set and tried finding the most common numbers lol

Doubt it will work but I love him for trying and putting so much work into it.
 
toohectic said:
I agree with you. Your math is right except you said 16 tickets when you should have said 8 (for the 37.5 million case). People see these huge changes in the denominator for what seem to be a minor change in the number of tickets bought, which misleads them to think that the massive change trend will continue.
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Thanks.
 
belucheez said:
I love my dad. He made a spreadsheet thing on the computer trying to find out what numbers he should choose. He used every winning number set and tried finding the most common numbers lol

Doubt it will work but I love him for trying and putting so much work into it.
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That's awesome. If I don't win it, I hope your dad does.
 
ElectricBlanketFire said:
Yahoo says you're wrong:
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Yahoo is wrong. Again, break it down using smaller numbers. Lets say I roll a 10 sided dice numbered 1-10. Guess the number it rolls. What are your odds of getting it right? 1 in 10 obviously. Now lets say before the roll, you get to pick 2 numbers. What are your odds one of those numbers you picked is rolled? 2 in 10. That reduces to 1 in 5. 1 in 10 compared to 1 in 5 = doubled odds. To double your odds the next time, you would need to pick 4 numbers, then 8, then 16, then 32.
 
perfectchaos007 said:
Yahoo is wrong. Again, break it down using smaller numbers. Lets say I roll a 10 sided dice numbered 1-10. Guess the number it rolls. What are your odds of getting it right? 1 in 10 obviously. Now lets say before the roll, you get to pick 2 numbers. What are your odds one of those numbers you picked is rolled? 2 in 10. That reduces to 1 in 5. 1 in 10 compared to 1 in 5 = doubled odds. To double your odds the next time, you would need to pick 4 numbers, then 8, then 16, then 32.
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You can't simplify it like that.

1 2 3
1 3 2
2 1 3
2 3 1
3 2 1
3 1 2

If that is all the possibilities for the mega millions then buying your '1 2 3' ticket is 1 of the possible 6 combinations. 1 in 6 odds. Go ahead and buy '1 3 2' and you now have 2 out of the 6 possible combinations. By buying two lottery tickets you aren't reducing the number of possibly combinations. You have 2 of the 259,000,000 combinations available.
 
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