The lotto is an additional tax for people who don’t understand math
A lot of people understand how unfair the math is, and still buy the tickets because “you never know.”
Source: I buy tickets sometimes because you never know…
If you can afford it, then it’s no harm really. I’ve made a profit from the lottery myself, albeit a minor one. Depending on the lottery, it’s not the worst thing you can give pocket change away to for a bit of fun. So I never understood this “you’ll never win” mentality/gatekeeping hobbies, people know the chances, but it’s fun either way.
I think the big problem is that people who are addicted to gambling are being suckered several times a week. It’s not really gambling, it’s buying a daydream. If a casino gave you similar odds in one of their slots, it would likely be illegal based on the odds and the payout. So people who think of it like gambling are getting the worst of it. The expected value never approaches anything close to fair, even at rhe highest jackpots.
people know the chances
This article agrees. Huge caveat:
…Osmond…obtained a database from the Connecticut Lottery containing 21 years’ worth of winners. What did he find?
They are largely poor, largely minorities, and often addicts.
The lottery preys on these people.
Vox, “4 ways the lottery preys on the poor”, 2016
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One the most memorable reddit posts of all time:
Entirely dependent on the lottery, the only one I have heard of this being a thing is the main US one. You can remain completely anonymous in the major European lotteries for example.
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No, we do know. You will not win once.
Somebody might win a huge amount, but that one will not be you. I can guarantee that.
You will put in more money than you will get out. Somebody needs to pay their shareholders.
How can you guarantee that? The chance is close to zero, but not zero - ergo you cannot be 100% sure that they won’t win.
And that’s the point they are trying to make - you don’t need to be 100% logical to enjoy life. Sure, they probably won’t win. But thinking they might, the anticipation of scratching the tickets, etc, is worth it to them.
Oh no, I spent $3 to dream of being rich. Anyways
I always feel it’s more of a tax on hope. I know a few folks who play and the understand the odds very well… but what if!
‘What if’ can be very appealing for only £2, even if it is incredibly, incredibly, (repeat incredibly a thousand more times) unlikely.
Sucker tax
What a silly belief. Everyone knows the odds are ridiculous. It’s just that people are still hoping they’d win
Sucker!
It’s a quirk in statistics that buying a lottery ticket doesn’t really statistically improve your chances of winning over not buying a ticket.
But like also your odds of winning with a ticket are infinitely higher than without.
I’ll let you on a secret to increase your odds.
Since the chance to guess the correct numbers is so low that it’s almost guaranteed you made a bad guess… Just change the guess to increase your odds.
I think that the fact that people don’t believe you when you tell them that 1 2 3 4 5 6 has the exact same chance of winning than any other combination shows how bad we are with numbers , 1 2 3 4 5 6 is seen as something with very low odds of happening that is thought about as something that will never happen, but say 4 8 15 16 23 42 is seen as something that could happen anytime.
That’s the combo to my luggage!
Penneh!
Someone who thinks a lot has nothing to think about other than thinking
dont you think it is unthinkable to think that?
Once a thought is thought, you can’t unthink it
You win every time you do not play the lottery.
You have more chance to play the lottery your whole life and never win a significant amount, than it is to win a significant amount once.
Since the lottery is a business, big part of all the ticket sales is used to run the business (and to generate profit). Only the rest is used to pay the winnings.
If the jackpot is up in the ridiculous set for life amounts, I’ll drop ten bucks on a few tickets here or there. My thoughts doing so is this: if I lose ten bucks, then nothing really changes in my life, but if I’m truly lucky and hit that one in a quadrillion chance of actually winning the jackpot, then everything changes. I don’t ever expect to win, but I won’t miss the minimal amount of money I’m throwing in for my chance to. So why not bet on the long shot every now and again as long as losing doesn’t hurt me financially?
I only ever participate when my friends or family invite me to. And only as insurance to not be left out if they somehow win.
The way I see it, is that by never trying, I have statistically about the same chances of winning as someone playing.
Except their chances are infinitely higher than yours. It’s miniscule, but miniscule and finite is infinitely bigger than zero. Math gets funky around the edge cases
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You miss 100% of the shots you take.
and 99.9999% of the shots you do take
That number is too low. You need about 5 more 9’s at the end for it to compare to lottery winnings.
Isn’t it "you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
?
Edit. I think i completely missed your joke. It’s about the extremely low chance that you will win the lottery and you are using wayne Gretzkys famous quote to make the joke.
Sorry, im an idiot and i ruin jokes by explaining them so someone can validate me and say “yes, well done, you got the joke…”
Well done! You got the joke. :)
That’s the joke I was going for.
I just ask them how much they spend on lotto every week, then times that by 52 and then ask roughly what they’ve won over the year, take that from the first number and show them how much money they’ve wasted. Sometimes it goes well, most times it doesn’t, but they don’t bother me about the lotto anymore.
I’d rather see what Joshua the AI from “War Games” (the movie) has to say about all this…
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
The prop for the WOPR was actually a refrigerator box that was painted black and had Christmas lights. It also still exists. It was auctioned off for several thousand dollars a few years ago.
Which is pretty cheap for a machine that could start World War III, but also expensive for a refrigerator box but that’s government contracts for you.
The prop for the WOPR…
…the PROPR?
If someone thinks about playing lottery just tell them to bet on ‘1 2 3 4 5 6’ (or whatever the number of numbers in your lottery). Once you realize this combination is as probable as any other the chances of winning seem a lot smaller.
That is true, but as a side note i discourage you from betting on that sequence as a lot of people that studied probability end up betting on that same sequence out of spite and if it actually comes out the winnings will be much lower than expected.
What about 2 3 4 5 6 7?
Still too much overlap
What about 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 but then I open one of the other numbers to reveal a goat and give you a chance to change your mind?
That would clearly increase my chances, i take it
same reason it’s still a bad idea to bet on 4,8,15,16,23,42 even though it’s been a while
I can never get STDs if I stay a virgin forever.
Checkmate, antibiotics manufacturers.
been meaning to do the math on this for a long time but never remember about it.
Turns out I saved $43,800 by not playing the local lottery every week since my first job.
potentially times that by seven because there seems to be a different lottery for every day of the week.
I’d like to check if my smartarse sequential number pick ever won in that time but finding the historical numbers is a bit more work than I could be bothered with right now.
Depending on how your local lottery system works you probably would have had some minor wins over the years.
I have a $5 ticket every week. My logic is that “I’m renting hope” every week theres a minuscule chance that it could be my last week at work ever. I see a house that I’ll never be able to afford and I think “Sure, if I win this week. Lol” as opposed to getting all shitty about wealth inequality.
Put that $5 in an index fund and pretend you won $10,000 in 20 years.
Based. Using a simple lottery ticket as something to draw hope is good.
I buy a lotto ticket when the Powerball gets ridiculous. Probably won’t win, but I definitely won’t if I don’t get a ticket. A few bucks every year is worth that improvement from zero to non-zero.
You and many people, lowering your chances even more.
You are just donating money at that point.
I’m fine with donating like $5 every couple years. Also no, more people buying Powerball tickets doesn’t reduce chances to win at all, it’s not a raffle. The only thing that decreases with more players is, potentially, the payout assuming multiple winners.
I once calculated the chance of winning the pot if you pay 10 million in tickets. It was about 50%
we did it in school it’s basic math from how many numbers how many do you need to guess correctly, they can arbitrarily set those numbers to always be more than the population.
IIRC in my country where the population is around 5 million the odds of winning the lottery was about 1 in 6,5 million and in the neighboring country with 10 million people it was around 1 in 13 million
I bet you can’t win the lottery if you do play - care to bet on it?
