This feller and his now deceased granddaughter probably should have had a talk with you before winning the $315 million.
Posted on 02/15/2006 7:12:58 AM PST by grundle
"Obviously, people will focus on people who win," said John Allen Paulos, a Temple University mathematician. "All the same dumb sticks who did the same thing [and lost] are invisible."
Author of a bestselling book, "Innumeracy," Paulos says lotteries have always owed their appeal to people's loose grip of math.
Paulos recalled a line from Voltaire: "Lotteries are a tax on stupidity."
Paulos once tore up a Powerball ticket on the eve of a drawing in front of an audience. "They all gasped as if I just slashed the Mona Lisa," he said.
To a mathematician, the lottery is a game where those who don't play have essentially the same odds of winning as those who do -- none.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
I don't play 5 times a day - And I look at it as I won $5 a day!
I am math wiz and I will buy a ticket just for the fun of it.
I know Bayes's Theorem.
"To a mathematician, the lottery is a game where those who don't play have essentially the same odds of winning as those who do -- none."
But obviously someone DOES win.
So his math is a little off.
"I don't play 5 times a day - And I look at it as I won $5 a day!"
Just think if you didn't play 500 times a day!
That would $500 you won!
Better get crackin!
:0)
Yep. If only people would tke a dollar a day and invest it beginning at age 20. By age 60 they'd automatically have a 100% chance of a very large payoff.
You keep that up and you are going to have a tax problem
Jeez..what a frumpy nerd..sounds like he needs to get more than lucky with lotteries..
And, if I win... I can throw away those letters from Nigeria.
And, also... if I win... I'm outa here. No offense meant.
That is why I buy 1 ticket twice a week. I want to give myself a chance but I don't want to waste too much money chasing a fairly unattainable dream.
I pay $2 a week in the TX lotto. That said I know my chances of winning are very, very slim. But it is worth it to dream.
The simple math is thus: By saving a mere $3 million and placing it in a realatively mediocre savings account with a major bank, say 4%, you gain in interest $10,000 a month. Even taking out 45% in taxes you end up with $5,500 a month, or $66,000 a year.
Every year.
After Taxes.
Then it hit me, if you lack the math skills that would prevent you from buying lottery tickets every week, you will not magically get the skills if you happen to actually win.
(I do love irony though, and it would have been unbelievably funny if the ticket the professor tore up had actually contained the winning numbers =))
At one level you are right: no one wins without a ticket.
At another level the mathematician is right: YOU will not ever win. I can safely predict that based on the odds of each drawing. I think they have in the neighborhood of 300,000,000 numbers sold for each powerball if I heard correctly.
I would feel fairly safe betting against YOU in separate drawings if only 10 were sold.
To a mathematician, the lottery is a game where those who don't play have essentially the same odds of winning as those who do -- none.You've gotta be in it to win it.
It's also a tax on the willing, unlike most of them.
This feller and his now deceased granddaughter probably should have had a talk with you before winning the $315 million.
"The overweening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities is an ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption in their own good fortune... That the chance of gain is naturally overvalued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries."
This article is full of good quotes from people who argue (correctly, I believe) that the lottery is just recreation, no one thinks its an investment, people really like the thought that they could win, and it's a lot of fun.
About the only stupid quotes I saw (paraphrasing: "you have no chance of winning") come from the mathematician who seems to feel he is so much smarter than everyone else. Bet he voted for Kerry.
Statistically your odds of winning are so remote, they would be IGNORED if it were data sampling in a study.. so he's right.
If Radar paid attention to echos as weak as the chance of you winning the lottery it would be useless... they are ignored, thrown out... effectively non existant.
Lotteries are basically taxes of people who are bad at math... usually the poor.
Tennessee has a great set up... Tax the poor to send the middle class kids to college... way to go po folk... and you wonder why you stay poor?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.