General Chat

Can I leave you with this one to ponder over - someone is bound to know the answer...

The odds on winning the lottery with a single ticket are 14 million to one.

What are the odds of winning with two tickets? Or even more?

Surely the odds on the second ticket coming up are 14 million to one as well? And the same for all subsequent tickets?

So whilst it intuitively seems that you are increasing your chances by buying more than one ticket - halving the odds in fact - are you really? Because the second ticket has no greater chance of winning than the first one - whichever way you look at it....does it...?

like Sylvia - I keep trying too!! and have remained optimistic since the day the lottery was launched - I must be madder than I thought!!!!

Eldrick,

Even though I don't buy lottery tickets if I recall my maths lessons (and they were a very long time ago) if you buy more tickets you must increase your odds of winning but you have to have a certain ratio of recurring numbers on your tickets.



Sue x

Well I guess 14 million to one is better than no chance at all if you don't buy a ticket lol
Sue

Surely it depends on the ratio of the number of tickets you hold compared to the total issued.

If there are ten tickets and you hold them all then you have a 100% chance of winning.

If another ten tickets are issued to someone else then you hold half the tickets and have a 50% chance of winning.

And so on.

In other words, each ticket has a one in 14million chance of winning.

Ahh, but I'm just talking about the generally held belief that if you have two lottery tickets, you double your chances of winning.

If you adhere to this rationale, then once you buy 27 tickets, you have reduced the odds to 2:1 - got to be worth a throw at those odds, eh!

Doesn't matter really,it's not going to happen.

But tickets arent issued for the lottery, Brian - the number of tickets in existence doesn't matter - all that matters is the likelihood of the numbers you have selected being the same as the numbers selected by one of the machines.

It's just an amusing, offence free interlude that interested me when I saw the question posed and looked at it from a purely logical direction as opposed to an intuitive one.

Ah, but someone wins it Sharron - so it does happen :-)

Eldrick,

You would have to buy tickets with nos:

1,2,3,4,5,6, then 1,2,3,4,5,7, then 1,2,3,4,5,8, etc.,

then work your way through 14 million different combinations, buy your tickets and hope you don't share with some lucky bugger who just picked birthdays
:-)))

lol sue


Bev

70 million jackpot on Euromillions-what are the odds for that?

Now if I remember my Binomial Probability theory.........

(pity I dont - it was 38 years ago!0

xxxx mick

What do you want with another seventy million?

Does the euro lottery have 6 numbers as well?

if so, then the odds are 14 million to 1. Wouldn't matter if it was a 102.3 gazillion - the odds would still be the same :-)

Googled and found this:

Because the UK national lottery is a pure game of chance, there is only one way of increasing your chances of winning - enter more times! However, at the cost of £1 per ticket, you would have to look to spend £57 to have a high chance of winning even £10 in one draw

Basically, yes, it is the numbers that create the odds, not the amount of people paying it - the odds would be the same if you were the only one playing - it would still be 14 million to one that you would get the right numbers.

Interesting, Sue - I would love to see the maths behind that assertion.....

I suspect it is carefully phrased to avoid saying winning the Jackpot....it says winning the lottery then mentions winning £10 ......do you have a URL?

I'm intrigued by this and other intuitive thought processes as part of the course I'm doing....:-)

What do I want with another 70 mill-lol
Havent got one yet........ :)

http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/lottery/uklottery_odds.html

Note Eldrick it is a commercial site!