The idea isn't just probability, but what we think of probability. If you had a gun that basically ALWAYS blew up, you'd never pull the trigger because the risk is just too great. But the reward in playing the lottery is great, the risk not so much. So people think "eh, I'll give it a shot." The odds winning in both examples are exactly the same. That's what makes the lottery so enticing to play. The idea you actually could be a winner! Nevermind how impossible that is.

My mother used to play scratchoffs, and I swear she lost hundreds on 'em, but still loved to play. I agree with Bill Nye, it's completely irrational. And it's sad.

But if you want to talk about probability, you have to look at the chance of breaking even. Your chance of breaking even is always lower than 50% every time you play, so the trend is you lose your money. Playing at all is not a good strategy.

Probability of winning multiplied by how much you’d win if you did.
If that’s greater than the purchase price of the tickets you buy it’s smart to play.
Otherwise not.
It's not. Lottery pays scholarships for students in my state. It was quite hefty, too. Everyone in the state of Florida purchases a ticket, that's $20,000,000 raised. A lot of it goes to the Department of Education.


If I have one chance in 10,000,000 to win $30,000,000.00 then that is worth a $1.00 ticket. It’s like putting in a dollar and getting $3.00 back.
But even so, the chances are not averaged. You have a 1 in 10,000,000 chance to win, 9,999,999 in 10,000,000 chance of losing, and you're only going to do this so often in your life. If you buy a ticket every week for 20 years, that's 1040 chances. 5 tickets, 5,200. A whopping 20 tickets, 20,800. And your real chances are usually far lower than the cost of the ticket. Most of the time, you are losing money.


Sorry I didn't use the exact word you want. But my wording was "nevermind how impossible," which suggests some leeway for something as definite as impossible.


So, would you pull the trigger? After all, there is a chance you won't get shot.

You can argue nomenclature all you want, the point I made still came across. That's the purpose of language.


I mean, of course you can buy as many lottery tickets as you want, and you can only pull the trigger once, but people react a lot stronger to the Russian roulette thing than they do to the odds of winning a lottery ticket. People don't care about the odds of winning, they just really want to play and are under the impression one day, eventually, they will win. In reality, the odds are you will lose your money, and you're paying scholarships.

OK. 1 in 500 million is not impossible. It's incredibly extremely holy hell nigh-on unbelievably improbable. Happy?


What's irrational is people are so much more hopeful about a lottery victory than they are if the same odds were for anything else. Make it anything negative. Or not so negative - 499 million boxes, one of them has a slice of cake, the rest of them have raw broccoli, and some of them have nothing. How long will you play this game? Because the reward for the lottery is so great, it doesn't matter how improbable the odds are, the fact that the chance exists at all makes people giddy.

Things more likely than winning the lottery:

- Winning a Gold Olympic Medal
- Becoming a movie star
- Becoming President
- Becoming Canonized
- Becoming an Astronaut
- Winning an Oscar
- Get struck by lightning

Well, you have a 1 in 662,000 chance of winning a gold medal. 1 in 1 million chance of getting struck by lightning. 1 in 1.5 million chance of becoming a movie star. 1 in 10,000,000 chance of being President. 1 in 12,000,000 to be an astronaut.

Winning the lottery is 1 in 500,000,000. So, not quite as unlikely as fulfilling two from the original list, but it's hundreds to thousands of times less likely than each of the events I described. Being a prodigy AND struck by lightning is one in 250,000,000. That's still half as likely as winning the lottery.

Most people play the lottery to win money. If you have a better chance of losing money and nigh-on-zilch chance of winning, then rationally, logically, there is no reason to play. You are always more likely to lose something than gain anything.

And it should be said, the big jackpot does not change your chances of winning one bit. So even if the jackpot was over 500 million, realistically you'd need millions of tickets for this to even be considered a viable bet, and even then victory is still no where near guaranteed. Mathematically, there is no reason for anyone to visit any casino or pay into the lottery. You are more likely to pay for someone else's college education than succeed yourself.

Well, you should, because you're losing money just like practically everyone else who plays the lottery.

If you play the lottery, because you have a greater chance of losing something than of winning anything, you are making the conscious effort to slowly lose money over time. You like the thrill of gambling, the chance of victory. But you're more likely to spend $5 in order to win back $4 than to spend $5 and win back $100. There are stories of people winning the lottery. There are also stories of college dropouts becoming billionaires. But just playing the lottery, you're much more likely to lose money overall, and making the conscious effort to do so.

I told my mom this and she didn't accept it. She just said it's fun. I wish more adults, parents, and elderly played video games instead of losing their money at casinos or the lottery. Gambling is an overall net loss.

My cousin owned a legit Vegas slot machine, and when I was a kid I tried to figure out how often it would give out a jackpot. It took hours to hit the jackpot. It would take 10 coins and maybe spit back 1 or 2. Sometimes it would take 20 coins and give nothing. And when it gave the jackpot, it was actually underwhelming compared to the amount of money that went in. It showed me the real problems with gambling... People get so hooked on the intermittent victories that they ignore how much money they spent to get there. Mathematically, it's all a loss.

So, most mathematicians' answer? If they had $5, take the $5 and go. If they have to spend it, put it all on the biggest bet possible, play once, then walk away. The chance of winning with $5 is so small, you might as well win the biggest bet you can in one go. But otherwise, casinos, lotteries, and gambling are all designed so you lose your money. If the end goal of gambling is make money... it just doesn't work.