3 ms·

Moral of the story: buy tickets at "weird" times, to maximize your expected utility (assuming the pot is split among all wining-ticket holders). Same reasoning

by simonb 17y ago

Moral of the story: buy tickets at "weird" times, to maximize your expected utility (assuming the pot is split among all wining-ticket holders). Same reasoning applies to lotteries where you pick numbers. Avoid primes, patterns, sequences that amount to dates and other magical/folk numbers.

jncraton 17y ago
If people who played the lottery understood math, they probably wouldn't be playing the lottery. :)
- simonb 17y ago
  There are pathological cases where it can be mathematically rational to play. There just needs to be a sufficiently long streak of no winners (assuming pots accumulate).