Lottery jackpot a staggering $2.25b

TUESDAY night’s US Mega Millions estimated grand prize has hit a staggering $2.25 billion, continuing a trend of giant jackpots.

It ties the largest lottery prize in US history — and is bound to continue growing — and joins five other top 10 drawings in the last three years.

Lottery officials changed the odds in recent years to lessen the chance of winning a jackpot, which in turn increased the opportunity for top prizes to reach stratospheric levels.

The theory was that bigger jackpots would draw more attention, leading more players to plop down $2.80 for a Mega Millions or Powerball ticket.

Powerball was the first to try the theory in October 2015, when it changed the potential number combinations. In doing so, Powerball changed the odds of winning the jackpot from one in 175 million to one in 292.2 million.

It’s hard to overstate how fast lottery tickets fly out of the mini marts when the top prizes get so large. In California, for example on Thursday people were buying 200 tickets per second during the lunch hour.

The winner of Tuesday night’s drawing will not take home $2.25 billion. After federal taxes and state deductions, which vary across the country, winners will generally end up with around half that.

The probability of winning are overwhelmingly not in your favour. How bad are they? Cornelius Nelan, a math professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, notes the odds are about the same as rolling a die and getting a one, 11 times in a row.