This reminds me of when I was trying to see if it would be a good idea to buy a lottery ticket. Surely, I thought, I wouldn’t miss the weekly dollar for a chance at living a life free of having to worry about what I do for money.
But then I thought to visualize for myself the silliness of spending even one dollar a week on the chances of the lottery. Would you ever expect, even in a hundred years, the lottery numbers of one week to be the exact same as the last week’s? Then you should expect no different of your own ticket. I realized then that I would much rather have a definite candy bar instead.
Do note that there are lottery systems that it’s possible to game if you had sufficient funds to buy tickets and the jackpot has gone high enough.
For any system where people pick their own numbers, most people tend to pick numbers that are emotionally significant. Birth dates and so-forth. That seriously constrains the pool of numbers that will generate a winner. Depending on the system, if the jackpot goes high enough it’s possible to buy a large number of tickets that aren’t part of the typical distribution of numbers people pick and have a reasonable chance of making back more than you spent.
Does take more than a dollar a week in capital outlay though.
This reminds me of when I was trying to see if it would be a good idea to buy a lottery ticket. Surely, I thought, I wouldn’t miss the weekly dollar for a chance at living a life free of having to worry about what I do for money.
But then I thought to visualize for myself the silliness of spending even one dollar a week on the chances of the lottery. Would you ever expect, even in a hundred years, the lottery numbers of one week to be the exact same as the last week’s? Then you should expect no different of your own ticket. I realized then that I would much rather have a definite candy bar instead.
Do note that there are lottery systems that it’s possible to game if you had sufficient funds to buy tickets and the jackpot has gone high enough.
For any system where people pick their own numbers, most people tend to pick numbers that are emotionally significant. Birth dates and so-forth. That seriously constrains the pool of numbers that will generate a winner. Depending on the system, if the jackpot goes high enough it’s possible to buy a large number of tickets that aren’t part of the typical distribution of numbers people pick and have a reasonable chance of making back more than you spent.
Does take more than a dollar a week in capital outlay though.