No, they're comparing a lightning strike over a lifetime with a one-time Powerball jackpot. Instead, assume 50 Powerball tickets a year over 50 years. Then the odds are comparable.
No, incorrect reasoning and math. Even if you had 50 x 50 tickets for a single drawing, your odds would only go from 1 in 292 million to 1 in 116,800. The odds per the chart for death by lightning strike is 1 in 138,849. Sure, that's roughly the same odds, 1 in 116.8 K vs. 1 in 138.8 K, but that's for a single drawing of 2500 tickets ($5000, by the way) vs. a LIFETIME of lightning exposure. AND, the odds of each individual lottery drawing are INDEPENDENT of past and future drawings, so 50 tickets a year (2 tickets a week for most of the year, for a lottery that draws 3x a week every week) over 50 years is still 1 in 292,000,000 for EACH drawing. Even if you had a single ticket for 292,000,000 drawings in a row, your odds each time are still 1 in 292,000,000.
thanks alot- now my brain hurts-
Are you adopting the “lightning never strikes twice in one place” when drawing the odds down to 116,800?
What are the odds of getting the same numbers over 2500 tickets?
The idea of “lifetime odds” when it concerns mortality isn’t that straightforward. Consider crib death.