Lottery: A tax for people who are bad at math
March 22nd, 2010
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What can be said about the lottery? The probability of you winning it is always infinitesimally small. Exactly how small depends on the number of “numbers” used for the ticket and their range. If you buy more than one ticket, it increases, but it remains infinitesimally small unless you buy all or nearly all the possible numbers. Believe it or not, this has been done, and if the jackpot is high enough (as is the case, if it has not been won for several rounds) it is actually possible to get a positive return on it, assuming there are not too many other winners with the same winning number.
However, unless you can manage to buy a significant proportion of all the possible combination, then buying more tickets will just mean you’ve lost more money when you don’t win – which is almost certainly going to be the case.
It really doesn’t matter how you chose the numbers. And yes, there have been some who looked at which numbers come up the most often – nothing statistically significant, I’m afraid, even when it’s done with the ball machines.
But don’t tell that to the lottery guru:
I wonder how many times he’s won the jackpot. I mean he is the “guru,” right? I’m guessing none, or he wouldn’t be doing this video.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Humor, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 22nd, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I prefer the more puissant castigation: “Lotteries are a tax on stupidity”
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March 22nd, 2010 at 9:36 pm
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL That guy is hillarious. I love the tips he gives. HA!
DV82XL Says:
“I prefer the more puissant castigation: “Lotteries are a tax on stupidity”
That’s just because you’re not a Guru
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March 23rd, 2010 at 1:37 am
Oh brother. His big tip is stick the tickets to the fridge with four pieces of tape? great, more sticky tape residue left when you inevitably have to take them down. Heh, picking numbers is great too. Geez. It doesn’t matter how you pick them.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 2:58 am
I don’t know the odds of winning but I know exactly the odds of winning if I do not buy a ticket. I can afford a small stupidity tax but cannot afford the high health insurance lottery.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 3:30 am
I suspect most people buy lottery tickets for the same reason I do: for the opportunity to indulge in daydreams that have a chance (admittedly infinitesimal) of coming true.
For less than a glass of beer I can while away a sleepless night building and furnishing my dream home and having great holidays. You would have to be a complete idiot to expect to recover your bet (It would be like expecting to recover your beer).
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March 23rd, 2010 at 6:36 am
Not true. I’m not bad at math and I still buy lottery tickets. After all the number of combinations/permutations is not infinite and the games are not totally random.
All you have to do categorize the combinations into some physical attributes and analyze the results in relation to those categories and see if there’s a pattern. It should show up as clustering in the data. R is a good language to use.
P.S. No I haven’t done the analysis yet. Someday I’ll get around to it when there’s nothing better to do.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 7:00 am
I read a decade or so ago a statistics about a famous race horse race guru (and TV celebrity) that claimed to have given in his paper several dozen correct race results in the previous year.
That claim was of course true, but what he didn’t brag too much about is that he issued so many guesses that by playing all of them, you would have lost roughly the price of a good car, yet his paper is still one of the best selling in french written press.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 8:44 am
If you think that’s scary, look at the comments. I found this gem:
“I thought this was gonna be that movie where the village picks and stones a girl.”
Why would someone search for that?!?!
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March 23rd, 2010 at 8:47 am
I’ve never won the lottery yet, but I’ll share my system with the rest of you. Instead of buying lottery tickets, I pick up pieces of litter. If the litter is a winning lottery ticket, I cash it in. If it’s not, I put it in the trash.
Compared to all the other lottery “systems” out there, mine is a lot cheaper, and almost as likely to win.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 9:19 am
I spend beer money on lottery tickets occasionally, for the pleasure of the daydream (I must get around to 3-D modelling the library I’m going to build for myself when I win the big one…). I do use a system, not one that will increase my chances of winning but one that, if I win, increases my payout.
Lots of folks are superstitious (who’d have guessed?) and tend to choose lucky numbers. A lot of these lucky numbers are birthdates, from 1 through 31. Most lotteries use sets of numbers up to 50 or so. I always choose numbers between 32 and the top number. Any set of numbers that come out in the draw is as likely as any other set — the lottery folks make a big thing about how random their number machines are. If I win then anyone who’s used their favourite family birthday numbers isn’t going to share in the jackpot with me.
I do randomise my number choices though — the major lottery company over here in the UK has publicly pointed out that they get at least a dozen entries each week of 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 and 49.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 10:06 am
@ #10 Robert,
Spending beer money on lottery tickets is going too far. Borders on obsession.
Your system is flawed because no lottery machine is really random.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Maybe I should add something: I don’t necessarily consider it stupid to play the lottery on occasion with an understanding that you’re probably not going to win. It’s pocket change to buy the occasional ticket and it does at least give you the small chance and the chance to entertain the fantasy.
However, many who play the lottery do so very heavily to the point that it’s a significant proportion of their money. People like this guy seem to play constantly and also make a big point of it. There’s no “system” that increases your odds.
A lot of this is completely based on superstition, as much gambling is. People “Feel good” about a given ticket or “are due for a win” etc etc.
So in short, I don’t think it’s a big issue if it is played with sanity and reasonable understanding of it.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 1:22 pm
drbuzz0 said:
The bigger issue is that lotteries are also a regressive tax on the poor. Yes, there is no harm in buying yourself an indulgent little fantasy on occasion, however the poor do not buy tickets to fantasize – they do it because it is the only real investment strategy they think they have. They buy out of hopelessness, and in desperation, and I am not referring here to people with a gambling problem, but to people that winning the jackpot or some sizable chunk of it is the only way out of poverty they can see.
That’s one of the reasons I like ‘tax on stupidity;’ the poor are rarely those with education or high intellect – in all but a few cases they wouldn’t be poor if they were smart and skilled. The real crime is that the government, who we expect to look out for these people, are the ones dangling this illusion of hope in front of the disadvantaged, and profiting from it.
That’s just not right.
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March 24th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
I’ll gladly give away an insignificant amount of money, the loss of which will not even be noticed, for a tiny but finite chance at receiving an amount that would change my life, and many of those close to me, for the better.
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March 30th, 2010 at 2:10 am
I did an analysis of winning combinations over a two year period once, from data I found online. It was for the Michigan lottery where you pick 5 numbers out of 52 plus a sixth one of a different set of 52, forget what it was called. If I picked numbers based on most frequently drawn numbers, I found I could do better than random chance, but not good enough to break even on the wagers.
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March 30th, 2010 at 11:55 am
MrNiceguy said:
I knew a maintenance man for a small chain of convenience stores in Texas. His system was very similar, to check every reasonably clean scratch-off ticket he found in various trash cans and parking lots.
He said he could count on this bringing in $25 to $60 a week. Some folks cannot even understand when they have won, or even bother to scratch off all the chances on their tickets.
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March 30th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I play the lottery here in Minnesota; the proceeds go to the state DNR, which I figure could really use the funds.
In the unlikely event that I ever win a significant amount, it will be a pleasant bonus.
There was a great Dilbert strip years ago that was hanging up in my college’s math department. Dogbert was sitting a table advertising half-priced lottery tickets. A rube came up and asked about them. Dogbert explained that the chance of winning was only one in ten million less. Enthused, the man bought some tickets. Then he noticed that they were for the previous day’s drawing. Irate, he pointed this out to Dogbert, who replied, “Your point?”
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April 8th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
drbuzz0 said:
I’m definitely in the $5-$10/year range of lotto player. What was really depressing, though, was watching my co-workers during a summer roofing job I did years ago. Several of them would spend $100 or more on the various scratch-offs and number-pick lotto tickets. One would go on and on about the $250 winner he got once. I’m not sure if it was denial or idiocy that kept him from understanding that he’d be better off if he stopped spending $5000/year on the stupid things.
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March 19th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
I bet my chances are better at winning the lottery than his wife Francis being perfect.
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