I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.
And those who arrange lotteries do know their business.
Telling people that they have a 95% chance of winning nothing at all is not a good way of selling lottery tickets.
“Do Not Play the Lottery Unless You Are a Millionaire” http://r6.ca/blog/20090522T015739Z.html
Likewise, the difference in impact between winning $0 and winning $2 million is likely a lot larger than the difference between winning $2 million and winning $4 million. So a straight EV calculation doesn't really tell the whole story.
There's also the entertainment value of participating in the lottery to consider, even when you win nothing.
I've heard this before, but why do you need a ticket to fantasize about what you'd do with that much money? It can be a conversation starter and I can see the excitement aspect in watching your numbers come up (if you don't have a hundred combos to watch at once), but fantasizing is free.
the likelihoods of the two events are similar, and one fantasy is free.
And props to you if you're a true rationalist who derive nearly equal amounts of satisfaction from both fantasy events, but most people don't behave like that.
Have you ever bought lottery tickets?
1e-9 and 1e-100 should both round to 0.
and since people spend all sorts of time imagining things with likelihood _0_ (or downright counterfactual!), 1e-100 should be plenty to get you rolling.
> How often do you find discarded tickets for future drawings on the street??
you're already fantasizing a wildly improbable chains of events (buy ticket, win max amount, and then, unlike a huge number of winners avoid having your entire life ruined by it), but imagining finding a piece of paper on the street is a step too far?
and if "found it on the street" is _really_ the problem, you could always choose to fantasize that someone gives you a ticket, or even just pretend that you purchased a ticket. (that's hardly improbable, after all.)
That's fine, then don't buy them yourself, but it makes no sense to argue against other people's actual experienced feelings and thoughts. You can't use logic to "win" this.
and yet here you are, producing justifications about how your fantasy has to have particular levels of believability, instead of just saying "i like doing it".
My aunt actually won 2 million back in 2007. She had just divorced my uncle (so I guess she is my ex-aunt) and bought a ticket and used the birthdays of me and a few others as the numbers. She was smart in that she chose to set up a trust fund with yearly pay outs instead of a lump sum. She told her sister that she was going to give her a million, but then after realizing that the tax was going to be around a million, she then changed her mind.
She then bought a not too fancy house on the beach for probably too much money (this was in 2007 after all). Then bought a non running yacht for $40k and a new car. Her first pay out check for the year was spent in a matter of weeks and she still had monthly payments on the new toys so she couldn't quit work either. Then she realized that the house payments were for 30 years, yet her pay out plan was only for 25 years and it would not be easy to make payments those last 5 years without more refinancing (she is still trying to figure that one out).
She got scammed many times on house repairs. When she first moved in, for what ever reason she said she needed to get the windows replaced. She paid a local contractor $9k to replace the windows. He showed up with a trailer full of windows and unloaded them all (and I guess that is when she paid him). He said he'd be back later in the week to do the install. Months went by with no contact so she found another local laborer to install them. But he quickly realized that all the windows were the wrong size and basically just junk left over from other jobs.
The $40k yacht never ran. Spent several years paying people to work on it, no telling how much. Then she finally sold it for $20k.
Then a couple of years ago, a hurricane hit the coast. Her house stood, but windows were blown out and the house got completely soaked inside. It was gutted and rebuilt for $80k. Right before this happened, she had actually fallen in a parking lot of a pet supply store after tripping over a piece of rebar that was left over from a curb demolition. She caught herself with both hands but it tore both shoulder cuffs. I don't think lawyers even got involved. The store cut her a check for $80k. It was that $80k that she used to repair the house with. The insurance still hasn't paid her back yet. Something about they wanted every contractor preapproved or something and they reject every receipt or invoice that she sends in (still an ongoing issue).
Been a wild ride...
My concern with the poor and the lottery is exploitative. It believe it is akin to a gambling addiction and a false hope. It is a government run institution that exacerbates a mental illness or exploiting a mental disability.
That thrill is only there when the jackpot is at $1B.