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.
Well 'I' will never win because 'I' don't play.
But even if I did, saying that I will 'never' win, even with 300 million to 1 odds, is interesting considering the entire strategy of gambling is 'chance' anyway.
There is always a 'chance' I could win. Likely? Probably not. But a 'chance' none the less.
"I would feel fairly safe betting against YOU in separate drawings if only 10 were sold."
Only 10 tickets sold?
What are 'odds' that will happen?
None.
Save $50 by not buying power ball tickets. Double the number each day. Repeat each day for 100 days. In no time at all you will have saved a large fortune.
The odds of winning have absolutely ZERO to do with how many people are playing. It's all based the odds of picking the right numbers, which would be exactly the same if yours was the only ticket purchased.
"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."
It's not the number of tickets sold that makes it hard to win. It's the probability of guessing all the numbers.