Yesterday my father-in-law asked me to buy him $100 in lottery tickets. He is ordinarily the kind of guy who would cite the quip “the lottery is a tax on people who can’t do math,” but these are not ordinary times. On Friday night the Mega Millions multi-state lottery will offer a $500 million jackpot, give or take, by far the highest jackpot ever offered in the history of the known universe. The prize is so high it exceeds the number of possible number combinations on a ticket, which is about 176 million. (In other words, the chance that any particular ticket is a winner is about 176 million to one.) The math seems to imply that a $1 ticket has an expected value of $500 million divided by 176 million, or nearly $3. Yet a closer look at the math reveals that the Mega Millions jackpot is a bad bet no matter how large the prize.
To read the full, original article click on this link: No Matter How Huge, Mega Millions Jackpot Will Always Be a Bad Bet | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
