On Friday I bought a lotto ticket and as usual, I did not win. It was a spur of the moment, hope upon hope, wish upon a star moment where for a fleeting second I knew for a fact that I was buying the winning ticket. I’ve read about people buying a ticket out of the blue and hitting it big. Do you know how many times I wished that I was one of those people?
I don’t buy lotto tickets that often. In fact, I would say that I buy one $2 ticket every other month. Sometimes I would chose a specific set of numbers, but in recent times I’ve been sticking to quick picks – I let the machines choose for me. Some people have argued that the lottery is a technical science. I think it’s all about luck – you’re lucky if you win and not so lucky if you don’t win.
Chances of Winning the Lottery
Just for fun I googled “chances of winning the lottery.” The link that I clicked on took me to Web Math which claims to solve all Math problems. There was a calculator which would allow me to calculate my chances of winning the lottery. I completed the boxes as follows:
- How many correct numbers must you choose in order to win? (e.g. how many numbered balls or tokens are drawn for each lottery?) = 6
- What is the lowest number you can choose? = 1
- What is the highest number you can choose? = 33
There was a small note at the bottom which said that each of the numbers can only appear once. I clicked on the “What are my odds” button and abracadabra my results were presented. The odds were calculated using basic fractions and some light computational work (using a scientific calculator of course). There were 720 possible combinations of those numbers ( 1 through 33) and my chances of winning the lottery are a whopping 1 in 1,107,568.
Surprising? Not really. I always knew that the odds were crazy but they were not as bad as I thought. I still think that luck plays a part in whether you win or not. I guess I’ll just keep my fingers and toes crossed when I buy my next ticket in March 🙂 .