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Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I get sick of hearing the smug crap about lotteries being a tax on people who can't do math. There are plenty of mathematically literate people who realize that lotteries are for fun, not investing.
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Agreed. I'm not stupid. It's just fun to be able to daydream "what if I win?"
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Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like I told my father in law, the dollar buys you the fantasy of going and taking a dump on your boss's desk (or quietly peeing in all the corners of the peoples' offices you don't like, and then quitting abruptly). That's all. I know I'm not going to win it, but the fantasy breaks down if you don't spend the dollar. (If you're spending more than $1, though, then you're wasting your money.)
Re:Good beer for $1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Make it.
Don't fantasize, make your dreams happen.
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can have that fantasy for free, you're just being unimaginitive.
Even if you can't have your fantasies without a realistic component, it shouldn't be too hard to imagine another low probability event that brings in a large sum of money without using up your $1.
If you're willing to throw money away for a fantasy, you should instead be tossing it into high-risk investments. If you put $1/day into Apple stock back in 1997, you'd have roughly $218,400 today. If you had done that for several years, you'd have several million dollars today. It's unlikely that you would have picked Apple, but compared to winning the lottery...(if you had chosen a NASDAQ company at random to put your money into, your chances of picking Apple would have been 1 in 2,711, compared to the 1 in a million+ chances of winning a major lottery...and most of the other outcomes wouldn't be a loss).
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Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Funny)
If you put $1/day into Apple stock back in 1997, you'd have roughly $218,400 today
Thank you... Very good points you made there. Now please excuse me while I actually do what you said.
Wait... You're going back to 1997? Can you bring me with you?
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you can't have your fantasies without a realistic component, it shouldn't be too hard to imagine another low probability event that brings in a large sum of money without using up your $1. If you put $1/day into Apple stock back in 1997, you'd have roughly $218,400 today.
But that's where you could be in 15 years, a lottery ticket is where you can be next week. Next week, no more mortgage to the chimney, no more McJob, no more rust wreck, no more cheapass vacations and skimping on the fun stuff. You can afford to buy a McMansion, quit your job, get a Ferrari, go to a luxury resort and eat caviar and drink champagne. One way or another you'd probably score some premium pussy too. No, there's not really many other events than winning the lottery that offers that (though I did get a tempting offer from a Nigerian prince in my email), not of such proportion and immediacy.
That said, those of us that really think this way may make up many people, but we make up a very small portion of the money involved in gambling. I have absolutely no interest in sitting down at a game where my top earning would be less than $10,000 because I know it's not a zero-sum game, in some way they're making a profit on me and in the long run I'd lose. I'd have to beat the odds to win and in a big lottery that can happen, it just takes one winning ticket and I'd be way, way ahead. But I only need the one ticket too, I don't need five or ten or a hundred. I just want to pay the least possible to be in that pool, no more.
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's where you could be in 15 years, a lottery ticket is where you can be next week. Next week, no more mortgage to the chimney, no more McJob, no more rust wreck, no more cheapass vacations and skimping on the fun stuff. You can afford to buy a McMansion, quit your job, get a Ferrari, go to a luxury resort and eat caviar and drink champagne.
Don't bury yourself with a mortgage to begin with? Stop buying into the "American Dream" and start living debt free. It's not very difficult to actually own a decent car. Nor does it take too much dedication to actually own your house and land. Hell, if you've even got a shred of intellect you can work entirely for yourself! The lottery isn't going to change any of that for someone already making poor financial decisions. If you immediately go out and buy some ridiculous mansion and a bunch of sports cars you'll quickly find yourself without any money again, trying desperately to afford all of those new toys. Though I suppose that is exactly the kind of idiot who plays the lottery to begin with.
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Okay, so maybe that was a bit full of hyperbole but I make above average pay, have been fairly sensible about money and even I like to dream about being ridiculously rich. My apartment isn't drowned in loans, my job isn't a McJob, right now I don't have a car but when I did it wasn't a rust wreck and I can afford some fairly nice vacations but I'd sure like an upgrade on all of the above. And no, I wouldn't blow the whole winnings on it - but give me $35 million which was the top prize in a lottery here in
Re:Ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can play a weekly for about $5 depending on what lotteries you play,
or you can buy a fancy coffee for about $10 a day,
or you can buy smokes for about $20 a week,
or you can go to the movies twice a month for about $20 a visit or this or that.
Frankly a lottery is one of the cheapest things you can throw your money away at. Just start picking apart any enjoyment you buy and think how much you spend in a year and the fact that there is zero return on investment. At least a lottery has a >0 ROI.
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You can play a weekly for about $5 depending on what lotteries you play,
or you can buy a fancy coffee for about $10 a day,
or you can buy smokes for about $20 a week,
or you can go to the movies twice a month for about $20 a visit or this or that.
I wouldn't do any of those things though, because they're all over priced and/or have no lasting benefit. At least with those examples, you are actually getting something in return for your money. The lottery gains you nothing but the misplaced hope of one day striking it big and being able to buy a bunch of tacky crap to fill your house with.
Re:Ugh. (Score:4, Informative)
Frankly a lottery is one of the cheapest things you can throw your money away at. Just start picking apart any enjoyment you buy and think how much you spend in a year and the fact that there is zero return on investment. At least a lottery has a >0 ROI.
You need to look up ROI because it doesn't mean what you think it means. Lotteries have a 0 ROI.
If a lottery has 80% payback, the gains on a $1.00 bet is $0.80.
The ROI is then (0.80 - 1.00) / 1.00 = -0.20
Americans households spend an average of $540 a year on lotteries alone, not counting other forms of gambling. That's not what I call "cheap", and several times what they spend at e.g. the movies.
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I read this article back in December in Time [time.com] which said that had you redirected your lottery spending to stocks over the 10 years ending December 2010, your annualized return would have amounted to -1.54%, according to Standard & Poor's.
As for Apple, that is a horrible example for in
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I read this article back in December in Time which said that had you redirected your lottery spending to stocks over the 10 years ending December 2010, your annualized return would have amounted to -1.54%, according to Standard & Poor's.
If you still had 98.46% of your money at the end of 10 years you would be significantly ahead of where you'd be if you'd been putting the money in a lottery.
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and a small number would be orders of magnitude ahead.
Life is inherently risky. A small number of investors would be dead due to accidents in the same time period. Should that risk dissuade us from investing in the future?
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Telling people to throw money at High risk investments instead of the lottery isn't necessarily any smarter fiscally, and in either case should only be done with a small portion of an investment portfolio, if at all.
I read this article back in December in Time [time.com] which said that had you redirected your lottery spending to stocks over the 10 years ending December 2010, your annualized return would have amounted to -1.54%, according to Standard & Poor's.
Actually, the funny thing is that this figure is most likely based directly on the S&P 500 index, which means that a highly diversified portfolio is what would have lost 1.54% over that time period. Someone who threw their all into one company might have come out substantially ahead over the same time period, but it would be risky.
I'm not saying that concentrating your money into a high-risk investment is the best way to make money on the stock market over the long term, but such an investment can simul
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Actually, the funny thing is that this figure is most likely based directly on the S&P 500 index, which means that a highly diversified portfolio is what would have lost 1.54% over that time period. Someone who threw their all into one company might have come out substantially ahead over the same time period, but it would be risky.
I'm not saying that concentrating your money into a high-risk investment is the best way to make money on the stock market over the long term, but such an investment can simulate the feel of the lottery (if this pays out I'll have $4 million and I can quit my job!) with a much better statistical outlook.
Much better? How does spending $1 on a random lottery ticket once or twice a month on the chance that I win $100+ million whenever the lottery peaks prove to be a poor choice? Even if I spend $12 a year, that is still more equitable in the dreams of achieving a beyond lucrative return than the purchase of (insert high risk stock here) + fees.
Apple is not a horrible example because I'm talking about high risk investments. During all the bad years that Apple went through, it would have seemed like a terrible option and most investors clearly felt this way. However, getting in and sticking with Apple at any point before 2004 would have led to absurd returns today (roughly 6000% plus up to two stock splits).
The stock splits shouldn't be considered as abnormally large or beneficial, especially to anybody who didn't have a large number of shares. The last split in 2005 was a
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Even if I spend $12 a year, that is still more equitable in the dreams of achieving a beyond lucrative return than the purchase of (insert high risk stock here) + fees.
Well, I guess if you're going to be that cheap about it then you're right. At such low volumes it's not worth the fees. I was thinking more along the lines of $365/year, which would be more workable if done right (taking advantage of current trading relationships and being done once a year in a lump sum or even less frequently).
You would've had odds somewhere around 1 in 5-6k that you would've won the lottery if you spent a total of $180 in $1 increments on lottery tickets whenever the jackpot was over $200 million. That is significantly less than the fees you would've paid investing (varying by your broker/how you purchase), and is negligible in impact to your overall portfolio for a 15 year time span.
Wait...what lottery is this? The Mega Millions lottery is the only one I know of that has reached $200+ million levels (3 times) and it has 175,711,536:1 odds. Buying 180 tickets wou
Re:Ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
I read this article back in December in Time [time.com] which said that had you redirected your lottery spending to stocks over the 10 years ending December 2010, your annualized return would have amounted to -1.54%, according to Standard & Poor's.
Astounding. If you pick the worst possible ten year period in stock market investing in the modern era, spanning from a stock bubble to a post-crash lull, during a period of unprecedentedly reckless public spending, you can actually observe a loss (as long as you adjust for inflation). :)
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One of the best beers in Europe and voted as such in a blind test by a panel of Belgian consumers is cheap German supermarket beer [allvoices.com] and costs 0.49 euro per half liter. In Belgium they take their beers very seriously so the news was a bit of a shock when it hit.
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Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. I'm not stupid. It's just fun to be able to daydream "what if I win?"
Here in the UK we have Premium Bonds for that (Government savings bonds with a monthly lottery in lieu of interest, and enough smaller prizes to provide some return if you leave money in long-term): instead of buying the dream with real money, you buy the dream with the hypothetical extra interest you could have earned if you had invested the money elsewhere. Not the best investment, although if you compare apples with apples (risk, ease of access, tax status, actual chance of you continually moving money around to get decent rates) and you've used up your other tax-free allowances you could do worse.
The national lottery gets better publicity, though. The Government would rather have poor people giving them money for free than slightly better-off people lending them money at low interest.
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Re:Ugh. (Score:4, Informative)
Now you've gotten me curious. Do the many small prizes actually give you a steady rate or return, or is it more like a random noise that just slightly tilted in your favor? In other words, could you actually lose money in the long term in these things?
Basically, each £1 bond has a 1:24000 chance of winning a prize each month. The vast majority of the prizes are £25. So, if you buy £24,000 worth you'll get a pretty consistent £25 per month tax free return (nothing one month, £50 the next, etc...) If you do get one of the slightly better prizes, that will put you ahead of the game for a while (I've had one £100 win). Obviously, the less you put in the longer you'll have to leave it in to be sure of getting that rate of return.
You can't lose money in the "game over - insert coin" sense - you can always get all of your stake back on demand and its government-backed (did we lose our AAA rating yet?). You can "lose" in the sense that your rate of return is likely to be less than the rate of inflation - but the same is currently true of most no-risk/no access restrictions savings accounts, once you factor in the tax rates on savings interest, especially if you can't be arsed to move your money around all the time to get the "special introductory rates". They're mainly of interest if you're on the 40% tax rate and have used up your other tax-free savings allowances.
The other advantage over the lottery is that the jackpot is a sensible £1M, which I think I could deal with without ending up face down in a heart-shaped swimming pool surrounded by empty coke wrappers.
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I think my mum has about £5000 in premium bonds (of which about £50 is technically mine, a gift when I was about 5 years old).
She gets enough "prizes" of £25 or £50 that it's OK, but I don't think she's ever won more than that.
You can't lose the original money.
Details: http://www.nsandi.com/savings-premium-bonds [nsandi.com]
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Agreed. I'm not stupid. It's just fun to be able to daydream "what if I win?"
Missing option: "A ticket to daydream about"
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Pure utter bullshit.
Of course the state is in it for the money. Duh.
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What's "fun" about it? There's no skill involved, just random chance. The only time it could be fun is in the unlikely event that you win.
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've bought exactly one lottery ticket in my life, and spent a total of $1.25 gambling in Las Vegas. I find gambling in general insufferably dull and pointless, but I'm clearly in the minority based on how large and profitable an industry it is.
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As painful as most modern movies are, I get much more entertainment from a $8 movie than from buying 8 power ball tickets, soon to be only 4.
The lottery is also a tax on those who can't find decent things to do with their time and money.
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"... on people who can't do math."
I'm not sure who the people are who can't do math. Sure the odds are very low of winning, but the flip side is that you are risking very, very little for a huge payout. That doesn't seem so unsound.
I rarely play, but on an occasion like this, what the heck. If you want to call me stupid for spending $5 on a chance to win $600 million go right ahead.
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"... on people who can't do math."
I'm not sure who the people are who can't do math. Sure the odds are very low of winning, but the flip side is that you are risking very, very little for a huge payout. That doesn't seem so unsound.
I rarely play, but on an occasion like this, what the heck. If you want to call me stupid for spending $5 on a chance to win $600 million go right ahead.
I think that reasoning puts you in the group they're talking about. (not intended as an insult, I think the people saying it's a tax need to realize that not everyone is buying them as some sort of investment)
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Um, that way of thinking - not realizing that the sum of small amounts isn't small - is a deficiency in mathematical understanding.
On average, US households spend $525 per year on lotteries alone, and "win" back $400. And they don't even realize that the expenses add up to this much - they don't claim the expenses on their taxes to offset their winnings. They pay the winning taxes and the cumulative losses.
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I get sick of hearing the smug crap about lotteries being a tax on people who can't do math. There are plenty of mathematically literate people who realize that lotteries are for fun, not investing.
What are you talking about, Most lotteries have better odds than the 401k at my last job.
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Are there any statisticians in the house? I know that if I were the only player, the expected payoff would be somewhere north of $3 on a $1 ticket. When you have a hundred million players and numerous ways to win, I get lost. I'd really like to know what the actual expected payoff for a $1 ticket is.
And yes I know that "expected payoff" doesn't equate to my chances of actually winning. I just want to sound smart around my friends.
Buy the Lottery (Score:2)
A number of years back, a consortium in .... Australia, I think it was, decided to "buy" the lottery of some southern state. One of the Carolinas, perhaps. They waited until the jackpot got big enough to be worth it. They organized teams in dozens of communities and paid them to buy lottery tickets; the article I read said they practically took over a number of convenience stores buying tickets. They bought EVERY POSSIBLE COMBINATION of numbers.
Yes, they "won", not only the grand prize but every lower
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Large and even larger gains are not that different and have decreasing margins of "value". 540 million, 100 million, 1 million? All of that would change my life. Heck, even 10,000 would make a noticeabe bump in my account and my happiness. You mentioned this "perceived value", but how you can argue that small losses don't matter but high monetary amounts matter more despite their decreasing margin of utility, is beyond me.
Just as an intellectual exercise, with those higher numbers how would you quantify the intangible value of changing your family's life? My parents play the lottery when they have no chance at their age of EVER spending the money however they like the idea of getting enough to pay off their kids and grandkids mortages, and they are reasonably well off in their own right so aren't sacrificing their own quality of life. When you start looking at it from a non-selfish viewpoint the extra money has greater value
Desperation tax (Score:5, Funny)
Some say stupidity tax.
I found my interest in the lottery is correlates more closely with how desparate I am to change my life.
Taxes should be honest. (Score:4, Insightful)
The lottery is a tax, often on the disadvantaged and least able to make rational decisions. It is collected by a private agency, who takes a sizable chunk of it, so it's also a tax that rivals anything we've seen in Iraq or Afghanistan in terms of money diverted. The government collects thrice on what's left -- the "causes" the lottery funds (all of which are things the government is - or should be - wholly responsible for), the corporate tax (assuming the lottery isn't in a tax haven) and finally the income tax of the winner.
Those who do "win" then go clinically insane (the usual fate), get harassed by "friends", family and the media until they then go insane (or broke in paying everyone to go away), or otherwise lose all of these supposed winnings due to the incredibly toxic atmosphere that revolves around lotteries.
Of course, it could be worse. The amount spent on US elections this season has eclipsed the total spending on ALL science, research and development by the US government. A handful of degenerate media spectacles, questionably-run elections where rules have been changed after-the-fact to fix who wins, advertising filled with bile, malice and 100% fraudulent statements, and we're not even into the main part yet. How's that similar? Because it's POPULAR toxic spending, that's how. If it wasn't popular, toxic spending wouldn't happen.
Re:Taxes should be honest. (Score:5, Insightful)
The amount spent on US elections this season has eclipsed the total spending on ALL science, research and development by the US government.
This is an inane remark on many levels. Obviously you don't have any numbers, and the claim is bullshit simply because it's ridiculous to compare a process that is largely funded by private entities with federal funding of science and R&D, while ignoring the far larger industrial R&D and scientific research. Tell me, how much do you suppose drug companies spent this year on trials? How much did Intel spend on R&D for their next processor?
The reason elections are expensive is that they decide who makes the policies that affects almost the entire economy. (And you're conveniently vauge on whether we're talking about federal elections or state.) If anything, the problem is that the government is so all-encompassing that people feel that it encroaches on every aspect of their life. If we had a smaller government, it could just focus on a few things, like sponsoring science, rather than being everything to everyone.
Elections are an adversarial process, whereas science is a collaborative process. Adversarial processes are, by nature, far more expensive than collaborative.
And even if you had a clue how to compare these things, you still have no idea what's going on. The Republican primaries this season are drawn out because the primary rules were changed in response to widespread sentiment that the presidential primaries in '08 didn't produce a good candidate. So the GOP is making a major change in how it does its business to try to be more responsive to voters.
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Re:Taxes should be honest. (Score:5, Insightful)
The lottery is a tax, often on the disadvantaged .....
This. A thousand times this.
The lottery is bad, not because it is a tax, but because it is a regressive tax. Rich people don't play the lottery, its mostly the poor, and some times the middle class. Ever notice (or at least hear jokes about) how on welfare check day people are queued up to buy tickets? It's because for many of the poor the lottery is a chance to get out of poverty. Unfortunately many of these people are poor because they don't have the education to get a well paying job. So while most ./ers realize that the lottery is a tax on people with poor math skills, guess who those people are.
I personally find the lottery appalling. The government shouldn't be taking advantage of its own people, doubly so when it is the people that need the government's help the most!
Re:Taxes should be honest. (Score:4, Insightful)
If only poor people had you making the decisions for them.
Re:Taxes should be honest. (Score:5, Insightful)
If only poor people had you making the decisions for them.
If gambling was okay, then why all the heavy handed regulation? And if it is bad, why does the government do it (here in Ontario it is a government run monopoly)?
History has repeatedly shown that the negative social impacts of gambling are just to great to be ignored. That is why it is either illegal or highly regulated everywhere in the developed world (including the freedom loving USA). And that it my issue with it.
Basically the government is saying that gambling is so disruptive it must be made illegal for the private sector to engage in it. But on the other hand it is perfectly fine for the government to do it. Add to that here in Ontario is was illegal for decades until the government got into cash problems and didn't want to raise taxes. They already knew it was unethical but did it anyways.
It would be like the government opening up a state run monopoly on selling marijuana after decades of it being illegal. If it is okay, then let the free market at it, if it is wrong then don't do it.
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If it is okay, then let the free market at it, if it is wrong then don't do it.
You forget about shades of grey.
Total freedom to purchase and consume alcohol regardless of age and motor vehicles you are operating? - Bad Idea
Prohibition? - "Here is your money and power, Mr Capone"
I'd probably vote for very regulated sales of marijuana, and for prohibition of heroin.
Regarding lotteries, they are a triumph of the 1%.
Convince a population that progressive taxes are for the sinister unAmerican communo-nazi-muslims.
Money still needs to come form somewhere.
But don't worry! We can rely those
The Emperor agrees with almost everything you say. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, it could be worse. The amount spent on US elections this season has eclipsed the total spending on ALL science, research and development by the US government.
At most a few hundred million dollars have been spent this campaign seasons. This is an absurd amount of money, but it's not even a fraction of NASA's $18.5 billion 2011 budget. NASA spending represents only a fraction of US science investment.
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At most a few hundred million dollars have been spent this campaign seasons
I don't think the numbers for this campaign are published yet, but in the last presidential election campaign, Obama spent $760,370,195, McCain spent $358,008,447 . That's just for the Presidential election. In addition to the Presidential campaign, the Republican and Democrat candidates spent over half a billion between them on the primaries. On top of that, there were congressional elections, where the spending was about three billion. Presumably there were local and state elections as well, with thei
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Except it's also hope for some people. They don't win, but the chance/hope it can get them out of their mess keeps them going when they have very little left.
The same could be said about heroin.
I pay my Math Tax all the time. (Score:5, Informative)
I fully understand that I have no chance of winning. I don't really care. A good portion of the cash goes towards the woefully underfunded public school system in my state, I consider it a fun idle activity to occasionally check winning numbers and to complain about never winning, and the $1 every so often is utterly inconsequential to me.
Some people have problems buying huge numbers of tickets, and that's a gambling problem, but it's absurd to seriously call it a math tax. Nobody buys tickets expecting to win.
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Re:I pay my Math Tax all the time. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a spouse to a public school teacher and a volunteer in said underfunded schools, the schools would be better served if you sent them the $1 (or more) directly. Then all the other hands aren't skimming off the top.
We gave two Costco cubes of Kleenex as a Christmas gift to our school. You wouldn't believe the effusive thanks we got. Donate a box of printer paper and you'll be worshiped for a month.
(Yes, I bought a lottery ticket yesterday anyway. No, I still have to go to work on Monday.)
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Second, the lotteries result in a cut in school funding. 10% (made up number) of the general fund went to education. Then they started the lottery and "dedicat
The last one, of course: (Score:2)
"Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon"
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I need Checkboxes (Score:2)
ticket givaway (Score:4, Funny)
In grad school (math) I did a gig for a while going to grade schools to do math labs/shows. One of my first was on statistics, I picked up an easy lottery ticket (1/1,000 of coming out ahead) and offered it to the student who could roll the odds on a set of dice in the time I was there. I had a couple kids rolling dice obsessively during the lesson >:->
Why I play (Score:5, Insightful)
I chipped $5 into the office lottery pool for the sole reason that I didn't want to be the one non-winner in the company.
Reporter: Mr. JSG, how does it feel knowing that everyone you worked with is now rich and retired?
Me: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Not gonna happen.
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I chipped $5 into the office lottery pool for the sole reason that I didn't want to be the one non-winner in the company.
Not gonna happen.
Mr. JSG, how does it feel knowing that everyone you worked with is now rich and retired?
Not gonna happen either.
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My reasoning is usually quite the opposite, I never play and if I have to do (*) I don't play the same number than my coworkers.
Why? If my number is a winner, I win. If my coworkers win, they quit their job andso I win. So I just double my possibilities that way.
(*)In Spain it is usual to sometime buy several tickets with the same number, keep one and present the others to relatives and acquitances (or inform them that you will be sharing the prize if that number is the winning). Specially with Christmas l
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Why? If my number is a winner, I win. If my coworkers win, they quit their job andso I win. So I just double my possibilities that way.
Well, if you hate your coworkers, I guess... But I like mine. I work with a lot of smart, fun, people. We all had a lot of fun joking about what we were going to do with our money ("I'm going to buy an island!" "Well, I'm going to buy a Kardashian."), and about half the employees in the office were in on the pool. It was really more of a camaraderie builder than anything else.
The only people taking it remotely seriously were management who were wondering out loud what would happen if half the office quit in
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Your math shows me that you probably like to play to lottery...
In the end it is the same; for a given bet increasing the numbers covered increases the odds by the same factor it decreases the prize.
Anyway, as you don't know how the (official Christmas) lottery works here, here is the long story.
Numbers go from 0 to 99.999, but each number is divided in series (and for "the real big prize" you have to have the right series) and each series in ten tickets ("Décimos", or tenths of a series). Each "D
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I did the same. The pool wasn't just "people at work", they were all people *on my team*. So not only would I have been the only guy who didn't win, I'd have been stuck with all their work! Double-whammy! No way was I gonna stick around for that train wreck.
I'm not playing to win. I'm buying very cheap insurance against my life totally sucking.
Odds are low, but prize is big (Score:4, Insightful)
I may only have a 1 in 28,633,528 chance of having a winning ticket, but really it's the only realistic chance I'll ever have to get $50 million.
Anyway I can afford to occasionally gamble the $5 for the minuscule chance of that $50 million.
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I may only have a 1 in 28,633,528 chance of having a winning ticket, but really it's the only realistic chance I'll ever have to get $50 million.
Anyway I can afford to occasionally gamble the $5 for the minuscule chance of that $50 million.
If those are the odds, and a game cost $5, and you could win over $500M, then buying a lottery ticket starts to make statistical sense. I don't know anything about the lottery in question though... are those the actual odds or just a number you made up for illustrative purposes?
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You're doing a good job proving option 2 right!
As long as people know... (Score:3)
Actually buying a lottery ticket does not significantly improve your chances of winning, if you're being realistic. But as long as you know that, if it's something that brings you joy, rock on.
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A "not zero" chance is a VERY significant improvement over a "zero" chance.
You keep using that word "significant" - I do not think that it means what you think that it means.
sig-nif-i-cant:
Adjective:
1. Sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy.
2. Having a particular meaning; indicative of something.
So the question is not whether 1/14,000,000 > 0, but whether 1/14,000,000 >> p where p is the combined probability of you inheriting a fortune from a long-lost relative, finding an 1979 Apple share certificate in your granddad's attic, getting a $1M settlement after walking into a glass door at an Apple Store, the bank accidentally crediting your account with $1Billion and paying you off to keep quie
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So the question is not whether 1/14,000,000 > 0, but whether 1/14,000,000 >> p where p is the combined probability of you inheriting a fortune from a long-lost relative, finding an 1979 Apple share certificate in your granddad's attic, getting a $1M settlement after walking into a glass door at an Apple Store, the bank accidentally crediting your account with $1Billion and paying you off to keep quiet, discovering that the dollar that you were about to spend on a lottery ticket is a rare 1976 bill with Washington's head on back-to-front, dropping dead so that your family could cash in on your life insurance, or otherwise suddenly getting rich.
.
Considering that the original point was "Actually buying a lottery ticket does not significantly improve your chances of winning" not "...does not significantly improve you chances of getting a windfall", your point is moot.
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You forgot to include in your calculations that the chances of finding an honest three card monty game are zero.
Hope - The missing option (Score:5, Insightful)
It is that tiny possibility of becoming financially independent that makes the idea of lotteries so appealing.
It is sacrificing that cup of coffee each week for a chance to gain riches.
Despite your failures, your limitations, your lost dreams;
no matter how bad a life you have led, no matter how many bridges you've burned, you could still make it.
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Even if the odds are massively stacked against you, the win can become disproportionately better than what it would suggest relative to its actual worth. One million would be enough though - I think studies suggest anything higher than that does almost nothing to improve happiness further.
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Lotteries represent hope.
Which is dashed every week.
Better to base hope on something over which you have some control and that has reasonable odds of paying off.
The way you teach people to achieve is to have them set a goal and then break the steps toward it into small, easier steps. Accomplishing each one reinforces the idea that they can make progress toward something. That's far better for building self esteem than repeatedly losing a buck on the Big Payoff.
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Not hope but false hope http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/False_hope/ [rationalwiki.org]
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I'm no fan of lotteries, but come on. The wiki page you linked to says "False hope is hope built entirely around a fantasy, a hope that has no knowable chance of coming to fruition." This simply isn't true, at least as long as the lottery isn't a fraudulent one.
Dream Catalyst (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll admit though I don't get why people buy more than 1 ticket for a drawing. The odds are so long that winning takes some kind of karmic or divine intervention. And if the Good Lord (my choice) is going to bless you, it's gonna happen whether you have 1 ticket or 1000.
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I have those fantasies too, but I phrase them as "if I bought a ticket and won..." and then don't buy a ticket.
Missing Option: (Score:3)
The most fun I can have trying to beat impossible odds for only a dollar.
Random numbers and only very occasionally. Using specific set of numbers is a psychological death trap as you can never stop playing or miss a week in case your "set" wins.
Buy 1 ticket. Not 1 Soda. (Score:2)
Lottery as population control (Score:2)
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this already, but there was a Sliders episode with a lottery used to choose who dies: http://sliders.wikia.com/wiki/Luck_of_the_Draw [wikia.com]
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But more importantly, I cannot lose if I do not play.
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Still more importantly, I win if you pay.
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I've played a lot of poker and I've never been dealt a royal flush my entire life
I have. No one else even had a pair of twos or felt like bluffing, so everyone else folded immediately. Most frustrating poker hand ever.
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you cannot win if you do not gamble.
There - fixed that for you. Let us start by calling it what it is. The first action of those trying to con others is to use language to disguise what they are doing.
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"The best way to choose who dies each year"
yes, I'm feeding the troll. This is an allusion: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/ [imdb.com]
no comments on the book/movie
I thought it was a reference to this classic...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery [wikipedia.org]
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A movie these days costs (for two, with popcorn & drink) $30 easily. It lasts two hours, tops, and frequently isn't any fun. For a $10 "quick pick" picket, I can have TWO DAYS of dreaming about all the things I can do with a half a BILLION dollars. Money VERY well spent.
But it's STILL a "tax on people who are bad at math"!
It most certainly is. First of all, the winner won't get half a billion dollars. That's if paid over 20 years without interest, without compensation for inflation. If you take a lump payment, you generally only get a small part of the overall amount, and have to sign away the rights to the rest.
And then there's the tax on the winnings. So your dream about what you can do with half a billion dollars is already broken.
Then there's what you're left with, which isn't just money. You'll be besieged by peopl
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Yes, really.
Say you win a million. What the lottery then does is approach bond companies and look for the lowest priced bond that will pay out a total of a million over 20-30 years (depending on lottery). Including increasing payments over the years, so most of the payout will be in money worth less.
The lottery then buys that bond - it generally costs about half a million, and pocket the rest.
If you choose a lump sum, they still shop around for the lowest priced bond, and give you the amount that would co
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To me the lottery is a decent way to launder money and a tax on stupid people. It makes for a wonderful combination and I fully understand why many lotteries are goverment run, they want a cut of the action.
Interesting that you're the first to bring up the money laundering angle. There's a local 'legitimate businessman' who seems to win the lottery every few years here. He then donates a fair proportion of the money to charity. He wins twice, buying the ticket for black cash and then getting a tax break on his 'charity' on his other laundered money.