The Lottery
1) What are your thoughts on lotteries in general,
2) When the expected winnings are greater than the cost of the ticket (as in tonight's Mega Millions game*, $640 million jackpot at odds of 1 in ~176 million; $1 to play), would that make you substantially more likely to buy a ticket?
Note: It is not physically feasible to buy one of each combination. (If it takes 5 seconds to fill out a ticket, it would take 28 years to get them all, and then there's the sheer weight/volume of the paper, ink quantities etc.)
*Edit: I neglected to account for taxes, the annuity's present value (or lump sum), and splitting the jackpot among winners. According to AP, the actual jackpot (present value after taxes) is around $347m, and nearly 1.5b tickets were sold (was not expecting it to be that high!), making the expected winnings about 23 cents on the dollar (about 40 cents including the smaller prizes). So yeah, bad bet.
2) When the expected winnings are greater than the cost of the ticket (as in tonight's Mega Millions game*, $640 million jackpot at odds of 1 in ~176 million; $1 to play), would that make you substantially more likely to buy a ticket?
Note: It is not physically feasible to buy one of each combination. (If it takes 5 seconds to fill out a ticket, it would take 28 years to get them all, and then there's the sheer weight/volume of the paper, ink quantities etc.)
*Edit: I neglected to account for taxes, the annuity's present value (or lump sum), and splitting the jackpot among winners. According to AP, the actual jackpot (present value after taxes) is around $347m, and nearly 1.5b tickets were sold (was not expecting it to be that high!), making the expected winnings about 23 cents on the dollar (about 40 cents including the smaller prizes). So yeah, bad bet.