Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Powerball Wednesday… What Are the Odds?

It’s Powerball Wednesday again, and the rumor is that the jackpot tonight is going to total over a half a billion dollars.

A half a billion dollars is a lot of lucre, and winning it means, to the winner, the end of working for a living.

The beginning of Easy Street.

Heaven on Earth.

Lots and lots of people are forking over their cash in wanton frenzy tonight hoping to get in on a windfall and a complete change in life.

And MSNBC has an interesting article on eleven rarely occurring things with which we can compare to the odds of winning Powerball.

Like the odds of being elected President of the United States: One in Ten Million.
Or the odds of being attacked by a shark: One in Eleven Point Five Million.

Still other websites report that the odds of being struck by lightning twice is One in Nine Million.

But my favorite odds are the odds of giving birth to identical (monozygotic) quintuplets, at over One in Forty-Seven Million.

How does this stack up against the odds of winning the Powerball Lottery tonight? According to MSNBC the odds now stand at One in One Hundred and Seventy-Five Million Two Hundred and Twenty-Three Thousand Five Hundred and Ten.

Man.

That’s some heavy odds. Who in their right mind would even contemplate going out and buying a ticket? Who would fork the cash over?

Me.

2 comments:

Felix Lee said...

I guess it's just wishful thinking that makes one fork over some cash for a lottery ticket. Those odds don't sound too promising, but I could still dream. :p

Karl Pearson said...

Did you win?

Me, I put my money on statistics and left the bills in my wallet. Checked this morning and they are still there.

Math FTW!