Incredibly Depressing Mega Millions Lottery Simulator

Although the darwinian in me has no problem with lotteries as a tax on those who don't understand probability, I'm uncomfortable with the fact that they generally constitute a regressive tax -- the common wisdom is that the poor spend a larger percentage of their income on lotteries, though a bit of fact checking reveals some debate here. In any event, I welcome this, though I'm afraid that the ones who really need it are unlikely ever to see it.

Turns out I'm pretty good at lottery. I get about a 20% return on investment, which appears to be much better than average.

For a small fee, I can teach you how to lose money more slowly.

I don't want to try this since I fear to use up my win-a-lot-of-money-in-the-lottery-once chance.

I put this into a category of "I knew this before, but seeing it re-enforces that knowledge."

Edited the select box values to run 100k times and I still only won $10508. (Browser couldn't handle returning 1 million results)

Lottery is a tax on people who don't know statistics (or math).

Or, why the best numbers to choose are just 1,2,3,4,5. (Or really, 33,34,35,36,37 (so you don't have to split the money with people choosing dates).

I once one $100 in a mega millions drawing. I bought the tickets when I was tipsy so maybe that's the key ;)

First off, it's gambling it's not expected to have a ROI.

Second, 2/wk or 1040 over 10 years is not that many 2-3 a day avg 1040/yr is more like it.

Third, I won $67 whooo hooo!

lol, the users were ahead (192%) when I ran my simulation.

72 bucks back out of 1040 for me.