Megamillions jackpot 1/2 Billion dollars !!!
Bean
Posts: 8,129
I'm not a big lottery player, but I had to buy a ticket for this.
Half a billion dollars...What would you do with it ?
www.megamillions.com
Bean
Half a billion dollars...What would you do with it ?
www.megamillions.com
Bean
Comments
Get offers from a lot more people that want to take my money than I do now.
Buy more stuff than I have now.
Buy a bigger house to hold the additional stuff I just bought.
Take Chip out to dinner and ask "If money was no object.........."
Sponsor UPETahiti and give away air fare and hotel with the free tickets.
That would be an interesting conversation.
Bean
So after taxes a lump sum payment would net you about $300,000,000.00 or so. I could fix a lot of doggies and kitties with that.
P
-- Gordon
I'm with doggiedoc. I won't go to the gas station for less than $200 million
You have about a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of getting hit by lightning in any given year.
You have about a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting hit by lightning during your lifetime.
You have about a 1.5% chance of dying in a car accident over the course of an average lifespan.
When you go to buy your tickets, just be sure to buckle your seat belt.
With a half-billion I could have a butler to take care of my micro-controllers.
-dan
Price............ $3,954,666,300
Winnings......... $300,000,000
======================
Balance Due..$3,654,666,300
Eastman Kodak is on sale for just $27,792,000
Probably not, right? You'd want something a little more random.
Except that the chances of the winning numbers being 1..6 is exactly the same as the chance of any other set of numbers emerging. Or as Knuth put it in Seminumerical Algorithms, if your "random" number generator can't turn out a string of twenty zeroes, it's obviously not random, since that is a perfectly valid result just as possible as any other specific string of twenty numbers.
Now I need to buy an insurance policy and wait to get hit by lightning...
The odds really suck. If there are 56 numbers to choose from, and you must pick 5, then (if I remember correctly) the odds are 1 in 56*55*54*53*52, or 1 in 458,377,920! I think I'll use localroger's method...
--Rich
The odds are not that bad. You're formula is not right because you don't have to pick the numbers in the order they are drawn.
In other words if you picked 1,2,3,4,5 and the numbers drawn were in the order 5,1,4,2,3 then you would still win.
The odds in mega millions are just under 176 million to one. This time it does make some logical sense to play.
Bean
1) Impenetrable fortress
2) Girlfriend robot
3) $10,000,000 worth of comic books.
4) $10,000,000 worth of coin-op.
5) Arby's
I think it might be logical but only if you were somehow guaranteed that other people could not play your same numbers, in which case you would have to split the "jackpot" if those numbers win. So your expectation ratio might not be what you think it is. Notice that the odds I have posted above have fixed values for all prizes except for the "jackpot" - because they leave open the possibility you will have to split it.
That's why localroger's suggestion of picking numbers like 1 2 3 4 5 etc. is statistically valid for hitting the jackpot, but would leave you splitting it a thousand ways. Same goes for some other "mystical" numbers that people play all the time, birthdays, horoscopes, fortune cookie numbers, etc.
But, of course, there's always a possibility I'm totally wrong about this.
It would be interesting to see if this thought holds true. I guess you could go back through all the winners and see if there were more multiple winners when lower numbers are chosen.
Bean
For a buck, I'll take a stab at a jackpot. The cost of playing each week is insignificant, that the payout allows me yet another way to daydream. (the ritual is to ride a motorcycle to the kiosk 5 minutes before game time and get a quick-pick, it guarantees exclusivity).
I'd hire forum members to finish my projects for me, at least that way they MIGHT get done.
$104 per year is the least of my worries.
Bean
There is a guy that has won six lotteries and wrote a book on how to win. He claims you should NEVER let the computer pick the numbers - use anything else. I suspect that buying from an outlet in a poor neighborhood has a better chance of winning if there are physcial outlets.
OBC
And you can see the typical "randomness" of most sets of winning numbers.
You can do something like totaling up all the numbers. Here are just 5 with totals of those numbers...
9, 19, 34, 44, 51 Mega Ball = 24 (Total = 181)
6, 17, 19, 20, 21 Mega Ball = 20 (Total = 103)
1, 4, 6, 11, 14 Mega Ball = 30 = (Total = 66)
28, 29, 43, 51, 53 Mega Ball = 7 (Total = 211)
2, 8, 30, 36, 48 Mega Ball = 31 (Total = 155)
9, 10, 27, 36, 42 Mega Ball = 11 (Total = 135)
So the totals of these past 5 sets of winning numbers range from 66 to 211.
If you total up some numbers in a row like...
1,2,3,4,5,6 Total = 21 Then 21 falls outside the above totals.
You could total up numbers in a row which are higher in value, then they would fall into the above range. But you could devise other tests which would weed out unlikely winners.
Say look at the groups for the first 5 numbers.
1 to 7
8 to 14
15 to 21
22 to 29
etc.
You may see that past winning numbers always are distributed in at least 4 of those groups and never in all 8 groups or whatever. (I don't know and I am not going to go to all that work!) So if your entry of numbers falls outside of that range, then you have an unlikely to win set of numbers.
Anyway you can come up with "tests" and "rules" as to what past winning numbers typically are, then eliminate sets of numbers which do not fit that "signature".
Actually "Arc Fault" circuit breakers used in new homes look for a "signature" on the electric lines of a short (spark), then if it fits the criteria, will shut off power.
Based on my past experiences, I should probably tell you my numbers, as none of them will be in the draw. I tell ya, I could be rich if that's the way the lottery worked.
-- Gordon
@
With that much money I would strive to test the limits of tolerable and inconvenient. I guess I already do that now without the money.
Ok, time for you guys to buy more Quick modules...
OBC
Would have been nice to be one of three!!
Just seen on our news that the seller get's $100,000 also, that's nice for them, should do something like that over here