Posted on 12/12/2002 11:02:03 AM PST by new cruelty
SAN JOSE, Calif. _ There's winning the Lottery. But winning two big jackpots? On the same day?
Angelo Gallina beat the incredible odds, and on Wednesday the Belmont retiree claimed his payoff _ $6.6 million, after taxes, for holding the winning ticket from both the SuperLotto and the Fantasy 5 games on Nov. 20. It's the only time in the 17-year history of the California Lottery that's happened. And experts said the odds of doing it are mind-boggling.
The odds of winning SuperLotto are 1-in-41 million. For Fantasy 5, 1-in-575,000. But for both?
"This is just amazing, astronomical," said Stanford University statistics professor Tom Cover as he calculated the probability of the double-header. "Oh brother," he muttered before announcing the odds: 1 in 23.575 trillion.
Cover said the odds that an individual player will win improve if he or she buys multiple tickets, but this run of luck is "still very, very rare."
Gallina has been betting against the odds since the game started.
"I dumped a lot of money in it," explained Gallina, who spends about $600 each month on the two games. "I was hoping I'd get it back."
The retired machinist for Southern Pacific Railroad buys an average of 20 lotto tickets a day with rental income. "That's the entertainment," he said. "It saves a trip to Reno."
Gallina bought the winning tickets on Nov. 20 for that night's SuperLotto $17 million jackpot and the Fantasy 5 $126,000 jackpot. But he and wife Maria will receive considerably less for choosing the lump-sum cash prize.
Gallina, 78, said it made more sense than waiting around for the 26 annual payments.
The pair mused about buying a car and traveling to Italy, Maria's homeland. Gallina said he'll probably splurge on the children, too.
"We've got two boys _ ages 38 and 33 _ and I think I'm going to have to buy them shoes," Gallina wise-cracked.
He also won't have to worry about saving money on motor oil and cat food.
"I'm collecting rebate coupons," Gallina said, "but now I'm going to throw them all away."
Well, yes, that was my point, in reverse. As I said, it's marvelous for Mr. Angelo Gallina. I'll bet he never saw it coming.
But in a state as populous as California, odds are it would happen to someone, somewhere possibly as frequently as once or twice a year. Seen in that light, it's a fairly common occurence, hardly the "astronomical" news item the article gives the impression of it being. That's my only point.
You've lost me. "Odds are" that what would happen? That a particular person would win both lotteries, or that both lotteries would be won? Either way, it doesn't make sense - I'm sure both lotteries are won quite often, probably dozens of times a year, but the odds that the same person will win both of them are extremely remote. Which is the point of the article, right?
From the SF Chronicle:
It had to happen sooner or later for Angelo and Maria Gallina, who figure they have spent $124,000 over the years on lottery tickets.
"It had to happen sooner or later" is another statistical fallacy, commonly known as the "gambler's fallacy": the odds of winning increase the longer a losing streak goes. Nope. Each lottery is an independent event. If you've spent $124,000 on lottery tickets, the ticket bought with dollar #124,001 is no more likely to be a winner than #1 was.
Besides, even if it were true, if the odds of winning a lottery are 1 in 41 million and you've only bought $124,000 worth of tickets so far, "it had to happen sooner or later" is still probably going to come much later.
What I found interesting (and why I dissed the SJMercury version) was (1) that these fools still keep playing, and (2) this:
About the only thing they agreed on was that they would be sitting in front of the TV this week as always, holding hands and watching the numbered balls shoot from the lottery machine.[...]
'HARD LABOR' REWARDED
Shaking the gadget over and over, week after week, and copying down the numbers was not easy, he said. He credited his windfall to "hard labor." In the back of the room stood the couple's accountant, Mark Vranes, who said that spending $124,000 on lottery tickets was OK for the Gallinas because it has "added meaning to their lives."
Neither. That an arbitrary person (you don't care who) would win both lotteries.
The bottom line is this: For one person, buying one ticket each in two lotteries for one week's draws, the odds of this happening are, as the article said, "astronomical." But when millions of people buy multiple tickets week after week, the "astronomical" odds start to come down to earth to the point where you should actually expect this sort of thing to happen fairly frequently. And, of course, there are also plenty of states in the union with lotteries of their own . . . .
As I said earlier, I am being nit-picky, granted. And it is a good human interest story. Still, I don't like to see figures abused that way.
Fair enough . . . for my part, I personally love figuring out why number games work.
What I found interesting (and why I dissed the SJMercury version) was (1) that these fools still keep playing, and (2) this:
Yeah, the "hard labour rewarded" part is pretty pathetic. Was there no reward in the hard labour of being a machinist? Some work ethic.
Truly astonomical. It equates to one protein out of all possible proteins of length 11(using 21 amino acids) or a DNA/RNA chain of 23 bases.
2111= 3.50278E+14
423= 7.03687E+13
Try a protein of 50
2150= 1.29111E+66
or a RNA/DNA chain of 150 bases
4150= 2.03704E+90
It doesn't say either way, but let's assume half were for one drawing, and half for the other. That brings his odds of winning the first to 145,600 in 41 million, and the odds of the second to 145,600 in 575,000 (a slight improvement). Multiply them together, and he's got about 9 chances in 10,000 of winning, or slightly better than one chance in 1100. Still not so hot, when you consider that's the odds for a 40 year span.
I suspect that this fellow is way up on the high end of lottery players, which reduces the pool of folks who can expect to see odds like that, and thus the odds that you'll see this happen again. Of course, the real kicker is that, along with not mentally subtracting how much he's spent on tickets over the years, he's also almost surely not figuring up his opportunity costs. Assuming an average 8% return, that same $600 a month he spent on lottery tickets would have yielded him almost $2.3 million at the end of 40 years. And that's a much better bet than the lottery ;)
He's probably going to try to offset his winnings with his estimated losses over the years. At least that's my guess as to what he may be thinking about. It won't work. But that's likely to be the origin of that $124K figure for his losses. So I wouldn't take that figure too seriously. Which throws off everyone's calculations for the odds of his winning as he did.
I think he can only deduct his losses for this year. They will be miniscule compared to his megabucks win.
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