4 ms·
It's also not clear what the end condition is. I edited the source so that it always picks my numbers, and it just keeps going. So far I've spent $2,734 and won
by jchendy 11y ago
It's also not clear what the end condition is. I edited the source so that it always picks my numbers, and it just keeps going. So far I've spent $2,734 and won over a trillion.
- cbhl 11y agoIt stops when balance = 0, i.e. you spent $x + all your winnings on lottery tickets.
- aetherson 11y agoRight, which is some bullshit. I mean, they cheated. Yes, it is mathematically provable that a random walk will eventually touch 0. That would be the case even if the lottery was strongly positive expected value. They ask you to comment if you won. Their program guarantees you lose when it terminates -- even if you hit the 1:292,000,000 odds.
- vorotato 11y agoThat's not true. 1) The title is can you win 800 million in powerball. If you passed 800 million, you win congratulations you did it. 2) It can be impossible to reach 0 even with a random walk.
- cbhl 11y agoI think you want to be more precise about "impossible". It is not mathematically provable that a random walk of finite length will eventually touch 0. Proof by counterexample: the set of every walk of length 1 where you win the jackpot on your first try. However, consider an infinite random walk. You can fix the first n values of the walk to win the jackpot as much as you want, but as the random walk progresses toward infinity, it is highly probable that you will be on a random walk that tends toward negative infinity. (You might have to play a lot; $437 million of $3 tickets would probably be enough tickets to play powerball for a few lifetimes.)
- elf25 11y agoyou are the only cadet to pass the kobiashilotto test.