3 ms·

An expected loss of 7 cents is not a bad price for the entertainment value of imagining what you'd do if you won big. But never buy more than one ticket...

• JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  I can imagine winning without buying any tickets at all! Expected value: indeterminate My friend Bob says he's waiting for the winning ticket to blow into his hand as he walks down the street. Only microscopically different odds than buying a ticket.
  • philh 11y ago
    > Only microscopically different odds than buying a ticket. If that were the case, then approximately one winning ticket would blow into someone's hand every week. Alternatively, literally no one ever would have bought a winning ticket. (I'm guessing here that nobody has ever won by having the winning ticket blow into their hand. Correct me if I'm wrong.) Buying a winning ticket is incredibly unlikely, and having the winning ticket blow into your hand is incredibly unlikely. But the difference between these two is very large.
    • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Both are less than one in 100M. Indistinguishable from where I stand.
      • TeMPOraL 11y ago
        A handy random statistic from https://what-if.xkcd.com/19/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/19/ for anchoring the discussion: "Astronomer Alan Harris calculates that a person’s lifetime odds of death from a comet or meteorite impact are about 1 in 700,000."