Posted on 10/23/2018 10:55:12 PM PDT by Innovative
Lottery officials on Tuesday drew the Mega Millions numbers in the historic jackpot of $1.6 billion — the biggest lottery in U.S. history.
The numbers were: 5-28-62-65-70, with a Mega Ball number of 5.
Officials have yet to say if there were any winners.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I know I didn't win, I did not buy a ticket.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3699305/posts
My thread. One winner apparently so far...South Carolina
No enormous tax bill, attorney/financial manager fees or hiding out from long-lost relatives for me either.
Let them eat cake.
I bought a ticket and didn’t win this time. Did win $10 last week. Told the clerk he left off a few zeros on the $10. He just laughed. So did I and cried as I went out the door. So close but so far away.
Damned, now I have to go to the doctor and work tomorrow. No lallygagging for me.
The tragic thing about lotteries is that so many poor people use them as a surrogate for the hard work and discipline they need to improve their lot in life. It ends up becoming their only hope, and they waste resources they could have used on bettering themselves, pursuing a dream that only a tiny few will ever have come true.
I hope whoever wins is wise and has a good support system.
So far 1 winning ticket in South Carolina, I’m praying for more winners. Hate to see 1 single person winning that much.
I’m hoping the winner is a conservative gun owning MAGA person.
boo! i am not a billionaire.
The best observation I’ve seen about this:
There is 1 traffic death for every 100 million miles driven. The powerball and megamillions both have about 300 million to 1 odds of winning.
If you drive to the store to buy your ticket, your are more likely to die on the trip to the store than you are to win the money.
What are your odds of dying while taking a dump on the toilet? Should you avoid toilets?
I’m hoping the winner is either my brother or my niece. They both live in SC.
Congrats to the winner.I think I'd have a heart attack first if I won that much.
There were 36 who were off by one number. They won only 1M each. I wish them much success and happiness.
Congrats to the winner.I think I'd have a heart attack first if I won that much.
There were 36 who were off by one number. They won only 1M each. I wish them much success and happiness.
No pity here for poor people who play, just think of them volunteerily paying their fair share in taxes from their tax credits.
Elvis died from straining while using the toilet. If you strain (I believe it has to do with putting pressure on the vagus nerve), your odds are probably much better than winning the powerball.
The point is not that you shouldn’t drive your car. The point is: You aren’t going to win.
The odds are astronomical that you won’t win, but saying that you absolutely will not win is incorrect, unless the lottery is fixed and therefore fraudulent.
If the odds are so low that it isn’t even worth thinking about, you aren’t going to win. The other side of the coin is that I wouldn’t even want to win. I’d be afraid of family members getting kidnapped and such.
There are far better ways to waste your money on bets that will never pay off. Most states still offer the original type lotto games that offer odds of 10 to 20 million to 1. The jackpot amounts are right in the range of the average American’s idea of “set for life”, and you have 30x the chance of winning (most of these games are $1/ticket, so you would have a 60x better chance of winning for the same amount of money spent. You still won’t win, but 300 million to one is just pointless.
If you look at it in terms of expected value (whick is a bit silly given that the bulk of the payout is in the jackpot, which you aren’t going to win, and not in the secondary prizes), the megamillions and powerball can never go over the ticket price in expected value. This is because of the exponential increase in ticket sales when you get the jackpot up over 700 million or so. You end up with so many tickets sold that the numbers you have are likely held by someone else.
The poisson distribution for this drawing showed a 9% chance of only 1 winning ticket sold. There was an 88% chance of the jackpot being won by more than one person. Even if you had won, the odds were that you wouldn’t have won the full 1.6 billion (really 900 million before tax, and 500 million or so after tax). You most likely would have gotten half or a third or a quarter.
With the traditional lotto games, there is only a fraction of the publicity when the jackpot gets into the 1 to 1 range of expected value. If you were to hit that jackpot (not gonna happen, but up to 60x better odds than powerball), you most likely wouldn’t share it with anyone.
“I’m hoping the winner is a conservative gun owning MAGA person.”
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Oh, yes!
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