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/sci/ - Science & Math

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15778927 No.15778927 [Reply] [Original]

Can a mathfag run the numbers at what point buying powerball tickets maximizes my odds of winning? I know the odds are basically 0, but if I wanted to min/max what are the break points?

Here are the rules and given odds. https://www.powerball.com/powerball-prize-chart

>> No.15778972

>>15778927
You just straight up ask math fags to make you rich out of the goodness of their hearts? I try to act like a sweet innocent curious retard to employ their help. You’re kinda messed up.

>> No.15778977

the chances for both me winning the lottery and me finding a winning lottery ticket on the ground are both so retardedly low that I can't be bothered with buying a ticket.

>> No.15778995

>>15778977
I'm not buying because I think I'll win. I'm buying because it's the only way I can experience real, tangible hope that things could radically change for me. Somebody is going to win eventually, what if I'm absurdly luckly for once in my life?

>> No.15779011

>>15778995
>I'm buying because it's the only way I can experience real, tangible hope
yeah but still stupid low chances. might as well wait for someone to lose a winning lottery number which is possible without buying a lottery ticket. you can literally find it on the ground. why would I increase this retarded low chances to slightly less retarded low chances by investing time and money and attention to the whole thing every week of my life? the increase in chances that buying a lottery ticket brings me is not worth the investment. it's not only the ticket price

>> No.15779019

>>15778995
>it's the only way I can experience real, tangible hope that things could radically change for me

This is the dirty secret of both casinos and the lottery. They don't sell lotto tickets. They're selling hope. It's false hope that's short and fleeting, but hope is what they're bartering.

>> No.15779020

>>15779011
Exactly because of the reason you quoted. The idea of finding a winning lottery ticket on the ground feels abstract and impossible. I can't believe that fantasy. Even if the odds are so similar as to be the same buying a lottery ticket allows for the fantasy to become believable.

>> No.15779031

>>15778927
A single ticket takes your odds from precisely zero to astronomical, which is an infinite increase. Anything more than that is foolhardy.

A single lottery ticket, every now and then, is a tax on hope.

>> No.15779033

>>15779020
well clearly the odds are not the same. even lower for purely finding a winning lottery number.
but you do share the environment with lottery players, and they are human after all. they tend to lose shit. someone buying a winning lottery ticket and loosing it is in the realm of possibility. it's just retarded low. clearly not correct figures but to me it's like 0.0000000001 vs 0.000000000000000001
sure, way more chances if you buy the ticket but still pretty fucking to low justify the investment, for me. I don't get the monkey reward you are getting out of it.

>> No.15779098

>>15779033
Fucktard. The thing is that someone wins. Eventually on a long enough time scale (which is weeks at most) someone wins. Personally I buy 1 ticket if its over 300 million. Thats a $2 bet against a 300 mil pot. Stop being such a poor retard and just buy a ticket. Its really not hard. Gamble if you want to win.

>> No.15779111
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15779111

yes its is only about hope

>> No.15779131

>>15779098
in a perfect world where probability plays out and you buy 300 million tickets, you'd win once and still be out 300 million from buying those tickets

>> No.15779133

>>15779111
>hope makes you an NPC
Look what they did to you.

>> No.15779134

>>15778927
As long as you spend far more money than what is possible to win your chances to win will get very close to 1.

>> No.15779147

>>15779098
>Gamble if you want to win.
I can't afford to gamble that much brain attention this shit would cost me, added through the whole of my life. it's expensive cope.

>> No.15779159

>>15779131
What are you even talking about? I've spent maybe a few hundred dollars over the course of my life who gives a shit? As an American adult if its under 1k don't even talk to me. If you happen to be out and like stop for gas and its over 300 mil just get a ticket. Of you happen to hear the powerball is at like 1 billion which it sometimes gets to go buy a ticket and a snickers. Its not fucking hard.

Also you're forgetting there are less people in the US than the odds but people still win all the time. Figure that math out college boy!

>> No.15779250
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15779250

Check the catalog you asshole OP
I am the only one that makes lottery threads here
Get on up out of here with my lottery threads

>> No.15779474

>>15779098
This is also my thought process. I buy whenever I hear about it. I usually buy 5. I'm almost certainly going to lose $10, which has very little meaning to me. But the upside is that I'm set for life, which has a lot of value. In a week I won't even be able to notice that I lost $10, but I will definitely notice that I won hundreds of millions of dollars a week later.

Sure if you were broke as fuck and you spend $10, 3 times per week on it or whatever, yeah that money could be better utilized. But seeing as I only play once or twice a year the risk-reward seems obvious. You play. But everyone I've talked to today is what "what? No I didn't buy any I'm not dumb" While they spent twice that on a coffee. It's a weird phenomenon. It's a value-signal that they don't waste money and understand the math, but they waste way more money that they would otherwise on equally useless stuff.

>> No.15779854

>>15778927
>lottery is a tax on stupid
>buys starbucksslop for 10 dosh
If you can't feel your loses it doesn't really matter.

>> No.15779867

>>15779854
false

>> No.15779868 [DELETED] 

>>15778927
Please plzzz please please please Please help educate yourself and stop abortion and animal agriculture/factory farming . Please watch this Free documentary online about animal agriculture at " watch dominian dot org" Google it or watch it on YouTube below. Please also watch this video on YouTube about abortion below
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko&pp=ygUPV2F0Y2ggZG9taW5pYW4g [Open]
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XGPv66ZqlEQ&pp=ygUoYWJvcnRpb24gaXMgc3RpbGwgbGVnYWwgaW4gYWxsIDUwIHN0YXRlcw%3D%3D [Open]
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H80Hz7x1I5M&pp=ygUXV2F0Y2ggZG9taW5pYW4gZG90IG9yZyA%3D

>> No.15779872
File: 140 KB, 1280x720, Kiss-The-Ground-Movie_TotallyVeganBuzz-1280x720-1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15779872

>>15779868
I have an idea. Watch how regenerative ranching can save the planet and you vegan shitbags are the ones fucking everything up

>> No.15780116

>>15779159
what would you prefer, that more and more people played to increase the potential win but also dilute your chances, or try to tell more and more people not to play, thus decreasing your potential win but increasing your chances of winning?

>> No.15780118

>>15778972
>act like

>> No.15780162

>>15778927
To have the best odds of winning the grand prize you should buy 292,201,338 tickets.

>> No.15780451

>>15780116
Other people playing doesn't significantly impact my chances if winning. That would only matter if they got the same exact numbers.

>> No.15780509

>>15778927
If you printed out all of the tickets and stacked them up.
3.75 inches for 1000 tickets thick
(292,201,338 /1000) * 3.75 = 1095755.0175 inches of tickets /63360 inches in a mile = 17.29411328125 miles of tickets.
From that you have to pick one.

Looking at one ticket per second working 24 hours a day, all year long, would take apprx. 9 years and two months. If you laid the stack flat, At 60 miles per hour, it would take you 17.3 minutes to drive by them all. If you stacked them up on top of each other and flew in a commercial jet at 40000 feet, you would only be half way up the stack of tickets.

For every extra ticket you buy or for each one you pick, you reduce that pile of 17.3 miles by 3.75 inches/1000 tickets, or = .00375 inches. Each ticket you by increases your odds of winning by 1/292,201,338. This is linear. Buying more tickets does not change the odds of each ticket, so there is no maximum anywhere except buying all of the tickets, and no minimum other than not playing.

Your odds of winning are effectively the same whether you buy a ticket or not.

But hey! Someone wins, and that's great!

>> No.15780511

>>15780451
indeed, I completely missed that part. the more the merrier.

>> No.15781722

did someone win it?

>> No.15781763

>>15780509
Only an idiot doesn't capitalize on +EV

>> No.15781787

Think about how your life is now. Think about how different it would be if you won the minimum jackpot of twenty million. Think about how different it would be if you won a large jackpot like $500 million. Which is the largest gap? For most people it's between their current wage slave life and twenty million, not between twenty million and give hundred million, even though that numerically is a larger gap. The lesson is to buy the ticket regardless of if it's for the minimum of twenty million or some record breaking billion dollar jackpot.

>> No.15781793

>>15781787
But I didn't won the minimum jackpot

>> No.15781795

Find Joan and get her secret as there's apparently something more to it than just luck.
>Joan Ginther is an American four-time lottery winner. She first won the lottery in 1993, when she won $5.4 million in Lotto Texas (equivalent to about $10.9M in 2022). Her next win came in 2006 when she won $2 million in the Holiday Millionaire scratch-off. Her third win happened in 2008, when she won $3 million from a Millions and Millions ticket. In 2010, she won $10 million, her largest prize yet, bringing her total winnings to $20.4 million. All of her winning tickets were purchased in Texas, and two of them were bought from the same convenience store in Bishop, Texas. She currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada, and prefers to keep a low profile.

>> No.15781796

>>15781793
How would you have felt it you did win the minimum jackpot?

>> No.15781911

>>15781795
Joan's secret is that she didn't buy hope
she bought winning lottery tickets

>> No.15781958

>>15781911
This, you gotta ask for winning tickets specifically. Most places keep them hidden away for discerning customers only.

>> No.15782009

>>15778995
>what if I'm absurdly luckly for once in my life?
dealing with your vanity would be cheaper tbqh

>> No.15782039

>>15778927
To maximize the odds, just buy every permutation allowed under the rules.

>> No.15782632

>>15781795
She has a PhD in statistics from Stanford. But the lottery is completely random so her statistics knowledge probably isn't relevant.

>> No.15782989

>>15778927
the best possible rate of returns is, you buy 1 ticket, and you win the jackpot and never play again.