Actually. Most lotteries become good bets when the jackpots get large enough. Assuming you don't split a pot with someone else, of course.
Avoid 12345, geometric progressions, etc.
Avoid 12345, geometric progressions, etc.
That's an assumption you can't make in a parimutuel lottery, which is the usual lottery design. Mathematician Ian Stewart, author of many good books on mathematics, gives one example of a lottery in Britain that had more than seventy winners.
That's the exact example I'm thinking of when I say avoid 12345, geometric progressions, etc. I believe that example was a simple pattern.
Lotteries never become a good bet. However, if one wanted to waste their money, picking a number that doesn't resemble a birthday or something someone else would choose would be a good idea. On the other hand, if you won the lottery from a $2 entry, $500K would be just as good as $15m since it was all random anyway.