Today is the big day! This evening $640 million dollar are at stake in the nation's Mega Millions Jackpot. This absurdly high number, totaling more than a half-billion dollars (before taxes) is really making flock to the local lottery stations. It may seem absurd given that the odds of winning are 1 in 176,000,000. But hey, it's just a dollar to buy a ticket, why not? As one lady I saw said, "you gotta play to win!" Say you were to win. First thing one has to do to actually receive their winnings will be to decide if they prefer a lump-sum (all the money at once), or to have a payment system. The difference being in taxes paid. Remember, that $540 million is income, Uncle Sam wants some of it back you know..
An analysis by computer scientist Jeremy Elson, who contributed to a Washington Post article noted, "the expected value of a $1 ticket is only 53.2 cents (or a bit more or less, depending on your state." So maybe the deal isn't all that great, unless you simply find some utility (pleasure, excitement, etc) from playing the game itself.
Also in the article, Elson points out that if people decided to buy a ticket for every possible ticket combination, it would first cost $176 million of course, but you'd be guaranteed to win about $293 million after taxes. But... there is a catch. "First, if it takes fie seconds to fill out each card, you'd need almost 28 years just to mark the bubbles on the game tickets. You'd also use up the national supply of special lottery paper and lottery-machine printing ink well before all your tickets could be printed out." So there goes that option...
Nevertheless, people are still buying tickets such as a cafe worker in Arizona who sold $2,600 worth of tickets to a jackpot hopeful. As Jesse Carter, a retired soldier in Wisconsin who has doubled his weekly ticket spending to $55 said, "I feel like a fool throwing that kind of money away... but it's a chance you take in life, with anything you do."
Mike Catalano, chairman of the mathematics department at Dakota Wesleyan University points out, "the more tickets you buy, the better chances you have of winning." However, based on 90 people a year getting struck by lightning, you are 50 times as likely to get struck by lightning than to win the lottery. Further, based on U.S. averages, you're about 8,000 times more likely to be murdered than win the lottery, and even worse odds, 20,000 times more likely to die in a car crash than hit the lucky numbers. Let's just hope its not someone's unlucky day...
Last night as I was watching the news, the total jackpot was $540 million, in just twelve hours, it has now risen to $640 million according to the AP.
So, really if you find it fun to play, that may be worth your dollar input. Chances are, that will be the last time you ever see that dollar. But still, one has to play to win. Good luck tonight if you are playing, you may need a whole bunch of it...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gxTOl06A9JYaGRQwI4C58QOFw4KA?docId=378e1c446e1842e1b5d927923f194474
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/mega-millions-frenzy-can-you-ever-beat-the-lotterys-long-odds/2012/03/30/gIQAbRmClS_blog.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
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