Impossible odds add to lottery thrill
One in 302,575,350. That’s the odds of winning the $970 million prize that is up for grabs during Friday’s Mega Millions drawing.
It’s been of months of build-up in the longest stretch in the game’s history without a jackpot winner and millions of tickets sold as the prize has now crept up to what would be the thirdlargest prize in U.S. lottery history if claimed at its current amount.
Meanwhile, a winning ticket for Wednesday’s Powerball was sold in the small town of Lonaconing, Maryland, at Coney Market. The jackpot had reached $731.1 million, making it the fifth largest U.S. lottery jackpot ever.
But just because there was a winning ticket on Wednesday, don’t get your hopes up that you’re going to win on Friday, said Ronald L. Wasserstein, executive director of the American Statistical Association.
“People confuse their chances of winning with the chances of someone winning. Sooner or later, someone will win that jackpot. That’s certain. What’s just about nearly as certain is that it won’t be you!” Wasserstein wrote in an email to USA TODAY.
Understanding a 1 in 302,575,350 chance of something is difficult, Wasserstein said. Stand on the corner of a football filed and start laying out dollar bills until you’ve placed 302,575,350 of them: That’s about 585 football fields.
What if you had pennies and placed 302,575,350 in stacks as tall as the Empire State Building? It’d be more than 1,000 Empire State Building-tall penny stacks.
“Humans are not naturally equipped to understand such big numbers. We can’t visualize how big that number is,” Wasserstein added.
The odds are 1 in 302,575,350 because there are 302,575,350 possible combinations of six numbers when picking five numbers between 1 and 70 and then a sixth, separate, number from 1 to 25, he said.
To feel they are increasing their chances, some people turn to lucky numbers or anniversaries. Others study past drawings to notice trends.
But there’s no real advantage there, Wasserstein said.
“Each number in the first five numbers has a 1/70 chance of being drawn. That’s about 1.4%. At any given point, some numbers will be drawn at a slightly higher rate than that, and others lower. Over time, those percentages tend to even out. So one might think the best strategy would be to pick the numbers that had been picked less often. But the math doesn’t support that approach any more than it supports picking the numbers drawn more often,” he said.
The only thing someone could do to increase their chances of winning? Buy more tickets. But those are still not great odds.
“If I buy two, my chances are doubled. If I buy ten, my chances are increased ten-fold. So, wow, let me buy 100, then at a cost of $200 I have increased my chances by 100 times!” Wasserstein said one might think.
“Unfortunately, that just means that I have a 1 in 3,025,753.5 chance of winning. Rounding that to 1 in 3 million is still a very tiny probability, and so you are, realistically, just going to lose $200 (though perhaps you have a small chance a recouping a small portion of that by winning a smaller prize).”