Playing the Lottery

“To grasp how unlikely it was for Gloria C. MacKenzie, an 84-year-old Florida widow, to have won the $590 million Powerball lottery in May, Robert Williams, a professor of health sciences at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, offers this scenario: head down to your local convenience store, slap $2 on the counter, and fill out a six-numbered Powerball ticket. It will take you about 10 seconds. To get your chance of winning down to a coin toss, or 50 percent, you will need to spend 12 hours a day, every day, filling out tickets for the next 55 years. It’s going be expensive. You will have to plunk down your $2 at least 86 million times.“

More:

“Why We Keep Playing the Lottery,” Adam Piore, Nautilus

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Mega Millions Economic Stimulus

Many American invested in securities that matured last night. Mega Millions Lottery tickets.

Expected payout: $640 million

Total invested: $1.5 billion

Winning numbers: 2-4-23-38-48 Mega Ball 23

Chances of winning: 1 in 176 million

You are 50 times more likely to get struck by lightning, 8,000 times more likely to be murdered, 20,000 times more likely to die in a car crash.

Lotteries: The tax on the dreams of the poor.

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Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-cTB

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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