The $1.9B Powerball draw is still delayed

I have never played a lottery, I have no interest in lotteries, I don't seek out media that tends to discuss or advertise lotteries, etc, and somehow every time it crosses a billion I become aware of the rate of this thing ticking up just because other people are talking about it, and always it's been growing fast at an accelerating rate. If this is just the money going into the pot, 'the house' must be making a killing! Anyone know what the margin on this thing is?

> People playing it obviously aren't good at math

Jackpot winning and odds is almost irrelevant, but is the only focus of most literature.

There are thousands of winners multiple times per week, and they do not split those smaller prizes. Several of which are over $1,000,000

regarding relative utility, I spend more on a cocktail

If you could buy one of every number for $600M then even if you have to split the prize 2 ways the payout is greater than the cost when the pot is that big.

Mathematically though, your odds on a single ticket don't change, and realistically even a smaller jackpot is going to be life changing. So does it really matter?

I still bought a bunch of tickets. I'll just hope that I'm in a simulation and the real me is the one on the outside running it :) If I win, prepare for world peace.

Rather than saying they aren't good at math a better way of putting it would be they are using a different objective function for their decisionmaking from you.

The marginal utility decrease from buying a ticket is close to zero for many/most people whereas the marginal utility increase from winning $2bn is essentially infinite. So the motivation for buying tickets is pretty clear in mathematical terms as long as you optimize expected marginal utility rather than expected value.