What would you do with $640 million?!?!

[Cavernio]

No lottery taxes in Canada AFAIK

[Aldentron]

Originally Posted by Izzy

How so? Doesn't the money come from all the losers of the lottery?

statistics show that the lower class buys the most lottery tickets. the money comes from all the losers of the lottery, who are already poor. hope that helps.

[flipsta_lombax]

Originally Posted by Spenner

Give it all away?

I wonder if you could use that $640 million to buy millions of other lottery tickets and win millions in multiple lotteries.

There are 175,711,536 combinations in the lottery. Though it sounds amazing when you win definitely, most likely there won't be a profit if you buy every one. In fact, there will almost always be a net loss regarding taxes, money allocated back into the prize fund, etc.

Someone do the math.

[UserNameGoesHere]

Buying ludicrous amounts of lottery tickets is a sure-fire way to ensure you lose great gobs of cash. Even if you win on some of them (which you probably will, in small amounts) it likely won't make up for your losses on all of them.

Provided the lottery is run fairly, and this is an important point, (meaning everyone really does have equal odds, there aren't unforeseen biases in the system, there isn't internal fraud, before the numbers are picked any number really is as good as any other, etc...) I don't see how it is stealing from anybody who willingly participates.

They paid for a chance to win. They didn't pay for a guaranteed win. They got their chance (the thing they paid for) and it happened to go sour but they got what they paid for.

Now, when there are people cheating the system, internal corruption, etc... then it really is people stealing because then it's not a fair gamble. If it's found there was cheating, corruption, exploiting the system, etc... then I think everyone should get their money back and the cheaters not only shouldn't win a thing, but should be penalized some amount (a large fine, jailtime, etc...).

[Reincarnate]

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/05/...ets-heres-why/

That figure makes me sick and I hope it's wrong even though it probably isn't.

This is one reason why I never buy lottery tickets. I honestly look at the entire system as a fairly exploitative thing. Poor/undereducated people are basically wasting their money because the act of doing something "because hey you never know" is enough to justify the ticket even though you are better off putting that dollar in a super-shitty bank and earning shitty interest.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by flipsta_lombax

There are 175,711,536 combinations in the lottery. Though it sounds amazing when you win definitely, most likely there won't be a profit if you buy every one. In fact, there will almost always be a net loss regarding taxes, money allocated back into the prize fund, etc.

Someone do the math.

It's going to be a negative EV game even with a high jackpot due to multiple entrants and the inevitability of having multiple winners. Even with a very naive calculation of expected value and then looking at it via the Kelly criterion, only millionaires should even bother.

Don't let expected value fool you, either. Expected value needs to be taken in context.

To make this really obvious as to why, consider the St Petersburg Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox

Basically, the expected value of this game is infinitely high. This means you should technically want to play this game no matter how much it costs to enter because you will gain in the long run (and infinitely so).

The problem: Obviously, you wouldn't touch this game with a ten foot pole. You don't have unlimited resources and you are likely to run out before the positive gains are realized.

Similarly, you could play the lottery until the end of time, and maybe eventually you'd win. But in most cases, you'd win back only a small percentage of everything you put into it.

Our intuition for probability is not great. There are tons of hilarious examples that can be demonstrated, but the point is that the chances of winning the lottery are retardedly low and the EV sucks anyway. So low that you can pretty much assume it's near-zero. Spend that money more wisely! Yes, you could waste a dollar and potentially make a killing.... but you could also waste a small chunk of change on stock and get a much higher return on average -- something you're more likely to ACTUALLY acquire.



"A typical graph of average winnings over one course of a St. Petersburg Paradox lottery shows how occasional large payoffs lead to an overall very slow rise in average winnings. After 20,000 gameplays in this simulation the average winning per lottery was just under 8 dollars. The graph encapsulates the paradox of the lottery: The overall upward slope in the average winnings graph shows that average winnings tend upward to infinity, but the slowness of the rise in average winnings (a rise that becomes yet slower as gameplay progresses) indicates that a tremendously huge number of lottery plays will be required to reach average winnings of even modest size."

[Cavernio]

Buying into a lottery is also playing a game. A rather shitty game, but there's still that little bit of hope every single time you check your numbers. Also gives a little credence to things like thinking about what to put in this thread on a regular basis. If buying a lottery ticket allows your dreams of being rich to feel more real, that's also a payoff. Also, even if you only win, say, a couple hundred dollars, that's still a win. You'll be happy about it, you might even go celebrate. Sure, if you went back and calculated all the money that you spent on all the tickets prior to the win, you'll find you're probably in the hole by a lot, but why would you do that? If you had put the money into a bank account instead, there's not going to be any feeling of winning anything. Also, your dream of what to do with x million dollars is never going to become true. Playing or investing in the stock market requires more than a couple dollars, which you'd only get if you were in the habit of saving money anyways. It also means you'd actually be feeling a loss of the thousand dollars or whatever you put into stocks if they failed, and you'd probably be blaming yourself for buying the wrong thing if it failed too. Neither of those happen when you buy a lottery ticket.

[All_That_Chaz]

Yeah first thing I'd do is put in as much as a bank could take with a low, stable interest rate. Maybe I'd buy some CDs. I'd give a million or two to my friend Bill who's been itching to start a LAN center in our area. He just needs startup capital. I'd give a few to my buddy Rob who is ridiculously underemployed so he can spend his time applying to jobs he wants instead of always being busy working crappy jobs. I'd buy an enormous house for myself and all my silly D&D friends to live in. But I'd probably end up getting another, smaller house just for myself. Those kids is crazy. And some of them are allergic to cats. I would need a kitty :3. I'd give a pile of money to leukemia and breast cancer research. Those two have personally affected my family. I'd donate to hunger relief funds and homeless shelters. I'd probably still work because I still want to teach and I imagine having all that money would take a lot of stress away. Not sure how much would be left after that. I guess I'd travel a lot and save the rest for sending my children to college.

[PrawnSkunk]

buy happiness