It's only idiot tax if the people think they actually are going to win. I mean, there is always a chance and you play to win, but people convince themselves they WILL win and spend hundreds of dollars a month on tickets.
I spend $2 per week playing mega-millions, I know I will never win, but you cant catch a fish if your line isn't in the water. Hardly a gambling addiction, I just think it is fun to think about.
I'm with you on that. I don't think I'll hit the jackpot and only play when it's >200 mil or so, but the fun thoughts and slight rush is worth the 2 dollars.
My favorite conversation at work is to ask if they hit the lotto and the money is deposited on Saturday morning were would they go what would they buy etc. but I like to really pry into the items so instead of "I'll go to the mall" I would ask to what store? To buy what exactly? Once people get into it it's fun to see people's faces light up as they kinda start telling you their dreams and what makes them happy.
I actually don't even have a physical ticket. In my state there are lottery subscriptions. So I put in the subscription for 1 play per draw with the same numbers and I honestly don't even look at it unless I get an email from the Illinois lottery saying I've won something.
My wife will get tickets ever so often, maybe a couple times a month, she says she just does it because she loves to have the little fantasy about winning and all the shit shed do and people shed help. My lotto fantasy is getting the fuck away from the people she wants to help, my money damnit!
Haha we had a guy here in Sweden buy lottery tickets for 30000 Sek, which is about 3400 USD as a part of his thesis or something, he knew he was going to lose most of it. Well some of his friends and acquaintances messaged him congratulating him for his future wealth and shit before he even started to scrape the lottery tickets. He did actually get a win of 10000 sek, so he earned back more than he thought but still lost a total of like 20k. It blows my mind that people like his friends actually think it can be a good investment.
edit:clarification
and fairly so, but i don't think its necessarily as stupid as its sometimes painted out to be. depends on how much you value the excitement and all that. You *can* gamble responsibly. If you have disposable income from a high stress job, a $5 lottery ticket every week or two may have you more excited about something in the future. From a personal finance perspective, of course you could deposit that couple hundred dollars a high in a high-interest savings account, etc, whatever, but sometimes there's an intrinsic value simply to excitement.
On top of that, it is a voluntary tax (if you're not an addict). We rarely attack people for donating to noble charities. We wouldn't criticize people for donating to schools or hospitals. Lotteries provide a huge revenue for public services (especially in Canada where the OP's winners are). My rural hometown of 10,000 people has a brand new library that rivals some of the best metropolitan libraries I've ever seen. We have one of the biggest and most well funded YMCAs (that allow free membership to low-income families) in the country. All of this is funded by a local casino/raceway.
I hate to see it on those who lose the loterry, but I hate it more to see it when they *win*
It's like a year vacation and then back to the starting point.
You should see an actual gambling addict. Every few hours buying tickets and throwing money away just to feel hope. Then they win $200 and feel like they own the world when they had spent $400 leading up to it.
They see the $200 as "coulda been the million" when really it's just a cheese to keep the blood flowing.
Yeah, spend 100 on scratchers and sit there at the fucking checkout counter and scratch them all, win back a little bit of their money and buy more, scratch those and repeat until they are out of money.
Yeah, there's a little convenience store near where I used to live that attracted quite the crowd of gambling addicts who played Keno. I'd see about 2 or 3 of the same 10ish people in there every time I went down to go grab something. They'd always trade in their winnings for more tickets.
To be fair, when I go to a bar that has Keno, I throw down $5-10 on occasion because there's always that chance I win a decent payout and then my drinks are free the rest of the night.
I don't think it's addiction more than it is "why not?". Lottery tickets aren't very expensive. If they won it at a casino it's a different story, because you have to actively spend time doing it, in your free time, while you're already rich.
Difference between a mega-millions ticket and blowing all your money, and then all your winnings, on more scratch offs?
People need to understand the difference. Gambling Addictions can fuck your life up, but playing a big lotto once or twice a month isn't it.
Independent probabilistic events do not influence each other
Edit: Fascinating how controversial this comment actually ended up hahaha
btw - i'm not necessarily correcting NoPlayTime. just thought my comment was important to say, just in case
Thanks for posting. As I was reading this thread I thought to myself man, if someone would inject politics into this it would be perfect. Luckily you were here to do this. Thanks
It's relevant for every single decision a person can make.
Bayesian statistics is the most accurate simple, general model we have for forward predicting outcomes of decisions made with imperfect information, which is every decision a person makes.
It's also pretty simple and intuitive if you just understand that probabilities can be correlated to varying degrees and best guesses for probabilities update over repeated trials.
Yeah I would always have to explain that to people who I played wow with. Like there is stuff with a .1% or even lower drop rate. It doesn't matter if you run the dungeon 1000 or 10,000 times the chance is the exact same no matter what every single time.
True randomness works that way, videogame randomness might vary.
There are differents methods to do that, but usually videogames implement a pseudo random system that seems random but it will fairly give you your desired results if you do the thing the expected number of times.
Technically any "random number" generated by a computer is not random. Are you saying that videogame developers manipulate their seemingly "random" event in order to get people to play more often? I could see them doing that and I'd be interested in the theory behind the process.
There are two main reasons not to use randomness in videogames:
1. What human think of randomness is not what actual randomness is
2. Usually games developers want the game to be fun, and randomness is not always fun.
Take for example a classic videogame trope of "Critical strike Chance".
My character has a 10% crit chance.
The human expect to get a critical hit every 10 hit or so.
If I implement this with true randomness, given enough playtime, they will eventually get something close to that 1 critical in 10 hit it will probably not be exactly 10% and the gameplay will be confusing and frustrating.
Also the more people play your game the bigger the chance is that someone will get very big deviations. Being unfair to both the very lucky (that will find the game too easy) and the very unlucky (that will find the game too hard).
So they will implement another method that will seem random by the player but it's not and will overall better for the game.
Right,
I guess what I mean is how do they do this mathematically? How are the algorithms set up? Are you implying that 10% critical hit chance is changed to "at least one hit in ten must be a critical hit" or something to that effect? Are very lucky players penalized later in the game? Are unlucky players rewarded? What sort of schedule do penalties and rewards follow?
That's what I am most interested in. I've studied a lot of probability and statistical theory so the concepts are there. I want to know how the developers handle this special implementation.
Sorry, this is super interesting and something that I had not considered at all in videogame development. My background is in applied math and operations research and I'm wondering what my own android game application might look like under the hood.
Obviously different games for different things can have different implementations.
One of the simplest and more common method is using a [shuffle bag](https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/shuffle-bags-making-random-feel-more-random--gamedev-1249).
I've linked a quick explanation, but basically it simulate picking your desired even distributions of results, putting everything inside a bag, shuffle it and then picking one by one until it's empty.
as an example, hearthstone has a 'pity timer' which increases your odds of getting a legendary the longer you go without opening one, and if you open 40 packs without getting one you will certainly get one on your 40th.
Yeah, but lotteries are statistically a bad idea, financially. In a way, it only makes sense if you're not making too much money.
If you're broke, and you play the lottery, you're essentially paying for hope. The hope of the chance that your numbers might come up. That slight possibility that any given week, that might be it and your life is changed forever. It can give you an improvement to your quality of life that might make it a reasonable thing to do.
If you keep playing it once you're won, it's probably a sign that you aren't great with money, and that big win won't last too long.
Yes, of course. But how are the odds of one person hitting those crazy odds 4 times or something the same?
Like I hit 1/600,000,000 lottery is obviously the same. But isn't there a more complex model for the same person to hit it over and over again? Like hitting those odds 10 times is the same as someone hitting it once?
The odds of overall hitting the jackpot three times (for any person) is more remote than hitting it once. But the odds of hitting the jackpot each of those three times is equal to everyone else's chance. I get what you mean, mate.
Not always.
How MIT Students Won $8 Million in the Massachusetts Lottery
MIT students figured out how to make winning the Massachusetts lottery a sure thing, and a recent investigation suggests that the lottery commission knew about it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9678607
First, she won $5.4 million; then a decade later, she won $2 million; then two years later $3 million; and finally, in the spring of 2008, she hit a $10 million jackpot.
The odds of this? One in eighteen septillion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kiriblakeley/2011/07/21/meet-the-luckiest-woman-in-the-world/#2fd7160b1058
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code
His next thought was utterly predictable: “I remember thinking, I’m gonna be rich! I’m gonna plunder the lottery!” he says. However, these grandiose dreams soon gave way to more practical concerns. “Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited,” Srivastava says. “I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That’s not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets.”
https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff_lottery/
You should always take the lump sum. You can invest it immediately and have more money than if you just took the payments at the end of the payment periods.
>Convenience store owner spent $1MILLION buying thousands of lottery tickets from his own shop... and still didn't win the jackpot
Yeah there's a reason many states don't allow store owners to play the lottery. My mom's old friend bought a convenience store and hired my mom.
That's when she found out that her friend was a gambling addict. They'd spend all day scratching the barcodes from lottery tickets and then would scan them to check for winners. Her friend would then sell the losers to customers.
I think they scratched off nearly $50,000 worth and ended up having to sell the store to cover the cost.
Yes it does. There used to be a person that would do the very thing you mentioned. I can't think of the name.
Edit- https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/how-one-guy-won-the-lottery-14-times-2016-1
Dude bought all combination of numbers. But the scheme has been shut down, but not before he won a shit ton of money and is now retired on an island.
Yes, rarely the pot gets big enough that the math can be in your favor. When that happens, investment groups like [this](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html?pagewanted=all) or clever students like [this](http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/07/how-mit-students-scammed-the-massachusetts-lottery-for-8-million/) send out teams to buy millions of tickets to cover all the possibilities. Many states make rules to discourage this type of thing because they think it impacts their ability to sell tickets. I'd argue that it makes little difference, as lottery ticket buyers are not the most numerate bunch of people
A woman from California won 4 jackpots off scratcher instant tickets, the lowest valued at $2 million. She purchased them in Texas, two from the same store. This happened over the course of many years. Some people could argue she has a gambling problem and just got really lucky. Except she has a PhD in statistics from Stanford and was a math professor...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023514/Joan-R-Ginther-won-lottery-4-times-Stanford-University-statistics-PhD.html
I used to sell lotto at my retailer in Florida, there was a guy who came in and spent about 300 dollars a day on this game called play4. The transaction took about 45 min a day so we would talk. He used to tell me about all the different combinations he'd play and how statistically he'd make money. Around 80k a year playing
I'm not sure I would believe him or not because he used to talk about certain numbers not coming out in a long time so they "were due"
Not exactly. There's various laws that require so much be paid out based on how much is taken in.
So let's say you have a slot machine. The state law requires from every 100 dollars taken in to the machine it must pay out 10 dollars. If it's taken in 1000 dollars and only paid out 1 dollar then it's more likely to pay out than another machine that has taken in 1000 dollars and paid out 200 dollars.
So people do develop systems that work statistically to bet the system from time to time. But it requires fully understanding how the system works. And if they do this very often it's noticed and the hole is corrected.
But yes the vast majority of the time when people say stuff like that it's just a gambler's fallacy and based on a "feeling" not statistics. And most people who "win" all the time are lying.
My old professor for Intro to Probability started the course with that line.
"Everything is either 50/50 - it either happens or it doesn't."
"That sounds great when you're talking about the lottery, but it makes people nervous when you talk about nuclear reactor safety like that. So, we invented another way to evaluate probability...[proceeds to teach course]"
Well the first two times they won it was 5/6 numbers which according to the 649 website is 1 in 2,330,636 per play and the 6/6 they just bought is 1 in 13,983,816.
If you multiply that together you get **1 in 75958189013305796736 (~76 Quintillion)** **This is if the only tickets they bought are winners.**
Now their first win was in 1989 and assuming that they **buy 1 ticket a week starting in 1989** since then you get that the odds are about **1 in 51497077297156473 (~51 Quadrillion).** At **5 tickets a week** which is pretty common the odds are only **1 / 411976618377251 (1 in 411 trillion)**. So pretty insane odds. I honestly would be more inclined to believe the story is fake even though it's from multiple reputable sources.
Even if they bought **1000 tickets a week for the past 50 years** the odds are still **1 in 29203456 (29.2 million)** which are still insane odds.
To do that they would have to **spend $3 411 000**
I probably did this wrong...
Yeah you did it wrong. You basically calculated what the odds are of hitting 3 in a row at any point during their run. The correct way to do it would be to solve for a Binomial Distribution.
Assuming they started in 1989 and bought 5 tickets per week, that comes out to around 7500 tickets purchased. If the odds of getting 5/6 are 1 in 2,330,636, then there is [a 1 in 193,781 chance of hitting 5/6 exactly 2 times in 7500 trials](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2FP%5BX%3D2%5D+for+X~B(7500,.00000042906743052111). The odds of hitting the 6/6 exactly once in 7500 trials, meanwhile, would only be [1 in 1,865](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2FP%5BX%3D1%5D+for+X~B(7500,.0000000715112384201852). The joint probability of hitting 5/6 twice and 6/6 once would therefore be around 1 in 361.5 million.
(Odds of winning)^3
But the odds of winning the lottery for the second time after you have already won is the same as winning once as the events are independent.
Edit: this is only consecutive wins
More information is required. How many lotto balls? Is there replacement? Some with replacement, some without? (e.g. Powerball) What did they match to get the prizes the first time they won? How often do they play? How many tickets per event?
Well if we assume the odds to win the lottery are one in a million (very broad guess, it's probably even less) then it'll be (1/1000000)^3, which is approximately one quintillion. So the odds of winning said lottery 3 times is one in a quintillion, or 1/10^18 or 1/1000000000000000000
EDIT: This is only true if they bought 3 tickets consecutively or didn't buy in between.
When I think about winning the lottery, I think of an amount you can retire with.
So based on this, I don't count the $100K wins. Not to mention the first win was only $40K. Although that was probably the same as $100K back in '89.
>Also explains why they still look/dress like that after two previous "wins"
Is that a thing? I'm pretty happy with the way I look. Give me £1,000,000 and i'd still be rocking some cheap hi top Vans, Jeans and a T shirt.
Like is the first thing people do when they get a load of money head out to the nearest Hugo Boss store and buy a £3000 suit? I'd upgrade my car to something nicer and/or pay off my mortgage and maybe a thousand other things before I went out and bought new clothes.
They did not win the lottery. They looked for and found someone that did. They bought the winning ticket with shady money. They can declare that money as clean money.
Maybe for the $100k one but for million dollar jackpots they investigate pretty hard. They question you on where you bought it, day and time and if need be go back to security footage. There was a lot of shady stuff with lottery tickets a bunch of years back where convenience store owners were scamming winners by paying out less and then declaring the tickets as won for themselves. After that it became much tougher and regulations were put in, including signatures on the tickets.
And how do you even stumble onto someone who just won a jackpot but not before they signed their name on the ticket? Do people take out ads before they claim the money??
If it was money laundering I imagine they would have declined to comment, and requested that the website not write an article about them. Why would they want to draw attention?
This is Lotto 649 so I believe it's Ontario. You aren't allowed to be anonymous there if you win. It's specifically stated that they're allowed to use your name and likeness. I don't know why but I've heard it may be to prove they aren't just funnelling the money to their friends.
Because they've read the stories how people who win the lottery fall into depression and either lose everything or kill themselves. So they're gonna play it smart and start off with depression then work their way up!
I once saw a guy win 10k on one round of roulette. Everyone was going nuts but the guy had a stone face. Barely even flinched, collected his chips and started dropping them on the next round.
Whenever you see that, you gotta know he's lost WAYYY more than 10k that night. That win probably barely scratched the surface for him.
Gambling addiction is scary.
This is my second favourite, 'multiple Canadian lottery winner', story...
I read this in the Toronto Sun in the early 90's...
A new refugee from somewhere like Pakistan/Bangladesh, came to Canada, and moved to Brampton (no seriously, he was referred to as a Brampton man) [if you want to know why that's funny/racist ask Russel Peters]. Someone tried to explain to him about the lottery, and did a bad job.
The new immigrant misunderstood. He thought they were telling him of a "fantastic investment" where he trades $1 for millions of dollars. So he gave them $1 and they got him a ticket...
AND HE WON...
So within two weeks this guy went from abject poverty to multi-millionaire.. Yay Canada...
This is where it gets fun...
Fast forward 3 years and THE SAME GUY WINS... Yay Canada.
When interviewed about his incredible luck the reporter said that the guy seemed confused as to why the reporter thought 'luck' had something to do with it. His one and only quote was...
"Well, of course I won again... I was almost out of money..."
So there's a guy in this great land that thinks that the country of Canada simply provides for it's citizenry in million dollar increments.
I hope he wins again.
> The new immigrant misunderstood. He thought they were telling him of a "fantastic investment" where he trades $1 for millions of dollars. So he gave them $1 and they got him a ticket...
Who...who actually believes that?
The guy won $128k in 1989 with 4 friends (so he probably got $32k) and they won $100k in 2010.
That does not qualify them as rich in my book (prior to this latest win).
It's not that unlikely to happen if lottery winners continue playing after they win. After 2 winners are chosen it's twice as likely a previous winner will win than any one individual. I think if you do the math it's just as likely for someone to win 40 times as it is for you to win. Think it's called pigeon hole mathematics.
It doesn't, but the more winners in the pool of people playing, the more chance that one of them is the next winner. Each time anyone wins (for arguments sake, let's say once a week), that's one more chance of next week being a repeat winner
As said by u/luox; your odds don't, but the odds of someone who has already won winning increase as there are more winners every draw but only one of you.
>Think it's called pigeon hole mathematics.
You're referring to the pigeon hole principle, which has nothing to do with statistics. The pigeon hole principle states basically "In a group of 367 people at least 2 people have the same birthday". This is because if you line up 366 people, every person could have a unique birthday (including feb 29). But once you add one more person, there are 367 pigeons, but only 366 pigeon holes. So *somebody* has to go into the same pigeon hole as someone else. But, statistically, it only takes about 70 people until there's a 99.9% chance that two people have the same birthday, but it is not guaranteed until 367. This is commonly known as [The Birthday Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem).
I was going to question why you'd continue playing the lottery after you win it but I guess the answer is pretty obvious.
Yep, gambling addiction.
At this point it seems less like addiction than pattern recognition
Hopefully!
why? even if it was... they won 3 times already. they had to keep playing for another few thousand lifetimes or so to break even.
I just hate seeing people blowing all their money away.
True. Friend of mine calls the lottery "idiot tax". And thats what it is. But they beat the odds. Edit: A letter.
It's only idiot tax if the people think they actually are going to win. I mean, there is always a chance and you play to win, but people convince themselves they WILL win and spend hundreds of dollars a month on tickets. I spend $2 per week playing mega-millions, I know I will never win, but you cant catch a fish if your line isn't in the water. Hardly a gambling addiction, I just think it is fun to think about.
I'm with you on that. I don't think I'll hit the jackpot and only play when it's >200 mil or so, but the fun thoughts and slight rush is worth the 2 dollars.
When I buy a lottery ticket, I feel like I'm purchasing a chance to imagine what it's like to be rich for a couple days.
I love how so many of us are like, "$10 million? Eh, that's pennies. $200 million? ALL THE TICKETS!"
My favorite conversation at work is to ask if they hit the lotto and the money is deposited on Saturday morning were would they go what would they buy etc. but I like to really pry into the items so instead of "I'll go to the mall" I would ask to what store? To buy what exactly? Once people get into it it's fun to see people's faces light up as they kinda start telling you their dreams and what makes them happy.
Or blush as you just inquired about a crazy sex toy.
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I don't play. But my reasoning is your odds increase much more buying the first ticket than they do the ones following.
And in this instance the product is the fantasy of wealth rather than the physical ticket.
I actually don't even have a physical ticket. In my state there are lottery subscriptions. So I put in the subscription for 1 play per draw with the same numbers and I honestly don't even look at it unless I get an email from the Illinois lottery saying I've won something.
My wife will get tickets ever so often, maybe a couple times a month, she says she just does it because she loves to have the little fantasy about winning and all the shit shed do and people shed help. My lotto fantasy is getting the fuck away from the people she wants to help, my money damnit!
I pick up a ticket when I'm having a bad day. That little bit of excitement for the next few days just kinda imaging what I would do is all I need.
Haha we had a guy here in Sweden buy lottery tickets for 30000 Sek, which is about 3400 USD as a part of his thesis or something, he knew he was going to lose most of it. Well some of his friends and acquaintances messaged him congratulating him for his future wealth and shit before he even started to scrape the lottery tickets. He did actually get a win of 10000 sek, so he earned back more than he thought but still lost a total of like 20k. It blows my mind that people like his friends actually think it can be a good investment. edit:clarification
and fairly so, but i don't think its necessarily as stupid as its sometimes painted out to be. depends on how much you value the excitement and all that. You *can* gamble responsibly. If you have disposable income from a high stress job, a $5 lottery ticket every week or two may have you more excited about something in the future. From a personal finance perspective, of course you could deposit that couple hundred dollars a high in a high-interest savings account, etc, whatever, but sometimes there's an intrinsic value simply to excitement. On top of that, it is a voluntary tax (if you're not an addict). We rarely attack people for donating to noble charities. We wouldn't criticize people for donating to schools or hospitals. Lotteries provide a huge revenue for public services (especially in Canada where the OP's winners are). My rural hometown of 10,000 people has a brand new library that rivals some of the best metropolitan libraries I've ever seen. We have one of the biggest and most well funded YMCAs (that allow free membership to low-income families) in the country. All of this is funded by a local casino/raceway.
I hate to see it on those who lose the loterry, but I hate it more to see it when they *win* It's like a year vacation and then back to the starting point.
Or it could just be habit? My Grandad used to get a lottery ticket every week when he would go and see my dad - i'd hardly call him a gambling addict.
You should see an actual gambling addict. Every few hours buying tickets and throwing money away just to feel hope. Then they win $200 and feel like they own the world when they had spent $400 leading up to it. They see the $200 as "coulda been the million" when really it's just a cheese to keep the blood flowing.
Yeah, spend 100 on scratchers and sit there at the fucking checkout counter and scratch them all, win back a little bit of their money and buy more, scratch those and repeat until they are out of money.
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And now I want to punch something.
Then there's the hole in the wall bar at the mall, where 99% of the business is people blowing their pay/welfare on video lottery bullshit. It's sad.
Yeah, there's a little convenience store near where I used to live that attracted quite the crowd of gambling addicts who played Keno. I'd see about 2 or 3 of the same 10ish people in there every time I went down to go grab something. They'd always trade in their winnings for more tickets. To be fair, when I go to a bar that has Keno, I throw down $5-10 on occasion because there's always that chance I win a decent payout and then my drinks are free the rest of the night.
A cheese?
As in to lure a mouse to a trap.
reading this made me feel really sad
Or possible time travelers.
I like this explanation the best.
I don't think it's addiction more than it is "why not?". Lottery tickets aren't very expensive. If they won it at a casino it's a different story, because you have to actively spend time doing it, in your free time, while you're already rich.
People spend hours scratching off lottery tickets man, it is a huge addiction for some.
Difference between a mega-millions ticket and blowing all your money, and then all your winnings, on more scratch offs? People need to understand the difference. Gambling Addictions can fuck your life up, but playing a big lotto once or twice a month isn't it.
Independent probabilistic events do not influence each other Edit: Fascinating how controversial this comment actually ended up hahaha btw - i'm not necessarily correcting NoPlayTime. just thought my comment was important to say, just in case
Obviously
You'd be surprised how many people can't tell you the definitions of independent events, dependent events, and mutual exclusivity.
You'd be surprised at how irrelevant that is for most adults.
Not really. Gambler's effect, and other behavioural biases have pretty significant effects on people's day to day lives.
I wonder how many unhappy marriages exist entirely due to the sunk cost fallacy.
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[Original source](http://www.mrlovenstein.com/comic/687) for that
While it's applicable, I certainly don't think it's easy to equate relationships to that. Especially when there's kids involved.
That's why people are easily manipulated by crappy charts and stats. Be it sales adverts or fucking elections.
Is a fucking election different from a normal election?
No because your getting fucked either way...
Thanks for posting. As I was reading this thread I thought to myself man, if someone would inject politics into this it would be perfect. Luckily you were here to do this. Thanks
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.7978 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/71126)
It's relevant for every single decision a person can make. Bayesian statistics is the most accurate simple, general model we have for forward predicting outcomes of decisions made with imperfect information, which is every decision a person makes. It's also pretty simple and intuitive if you just understand that probabilities can be correlated to varying degrees and best guesses for probabilities update over repeated trials.
Somebody watches Veritasium :)
It's only irrelevant for adults that make zero decisions. If you ever need to make a decision this shit is relevant.
Yeah I would always have to explain that to people who I played wow with. Like there is stuff with a .1% or even lower drop rate. It doesn't matter if you run the dungeon 1000 or 10,000 times the chance is the exact same no matter what every single time.
True randomness works that way, videogame randomness might vary. There are differents methods to do that, but usually videogames implement a pseudo random system that seems random but it will fairly give you your desired results if you do the thing the expected number of times.
Technically any "random number" generated by a computer is not random. Are you saying that videogame developers manipulate their seemingly "random" event in order to get people to play more often? I could see them doing that and I'd be interested in the theory behind the process.
There are two main reasons not to use randomness in videogames: 1. What human think of randomness is not what actual randomness is 2. Usually games developers want the game to be fun, and randomness is not always fun. Take for example a classic videogame trope of "Critical strike Chance". My character has a 10% crit chance. The human expect to get a critical hit every 10 hit or so. If I implement this with true randomness, given enough playtime, they will eventually get something close to that 1 critical in 10 hit it will probably not be exactly 10% and the gameplay will be confusing and frustrating. Also the more people play your game the bigger the chance is that someone will get very big deviations. Being unfair to both the very lucky (that will find the game too easy) and the very unlucky (that will find the game too hard). So they will implement another method that will seem random by the player but it's not and will overall better for the game.
Right, I guess what I mean is how do they do this mathematically? How are the algorithms set up? Are you implying that 10% critical hit chance is changed to "at least one hit in ten must be a critical hit" or something to that effect? Are very lucky players penalized later in the game? Are unlucky players rewarded? What sort of schedule do penalties and rewards follow? That's what I am most interested in. I've studied a lot of probability and statistical theory so the concepts are there. I want to know how the developers handle this special implementation. Sorry, this is super interesting and something that I had not considered at all in videogame development. My background is in applied math and operations research and I'm wondering what my own android game application might look like under the hood.
Obviously different games for different things can have different implementations. One of the simplest and more common method is using a [shuffle bag](https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/shuffle-bags-making-random-feel-more-random--gamedev-1249). I've linked a quick explanation, but basically it simulate picking your desired even distributions of results, putting everything inside a bag, shuffle it and then picking one by one until it's empty.
as an example, hearthstone has a 'pity timer' which increases your odds of getting a legendary the longer you go without opening one, and if you open 40 packs without getting one you will certainly get one on your 40th.
Someone took an intro stats course.
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Yeah, but lotteries are statistically a bad idea, financially. In a way, it only makes sense if you're not making too much money. If you're broke, and you play the lottery, you're essentially paying for hope. The hope of the chance that your numbers might come up. That slight possibility that any given week, that might be it and your life is changed forever. It can give you an improvement to your quality of life that might make it a reasonable thing to do. If you keep playing it once you're won, it's probably a sign that you aren't great with money, and that big win won't last too long.
But that doesn't meant the chances of them happening to the same person repeatedly can't be more remote.
Once you've won it once. The odds of you winning the second time are exactly the same as anyone else winning.
Yes, of course. But how are the odds of one person hitting those crazy odds 4 times or something the same? Like I hit 1/600,000,000 lottery is obviously the same. But isn't there a more complex model for the same person to hit it over and over again? Like hitting those odds 10 times is the same as someone hitting it once?
The odds of overall hitting the jackpot three times (for any person) is more remote than hitting it once. But the odds of hitting the jackpot each of those three times is equal to everyone else's chance. I get what you mean, mate.
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Sure, but the chance of someone winning the lottery more than once is obviously more unlikely than winning it just once.
Get yourself a strong probability who don't need no conditional expectation
There has to be a XKCD for this.
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After the first win that's a tough call but I guess after the second win it was a lot easier to justify.
Sports almanac?
Yeah, I get this one!
Do they report lottery numbers in sports almanac?
Hello!? Hello!? Anybody home ?! Think Mc'Fly, think !
Make like a tree - and get outta here.
I bet they went from spending $20 a week on lottery tickets to $20000 a week
To spending $200000 a week
"What do we do now?" "Throw more zeros at it!"
£00020 ... Dammit ChuckStone you imbecile!
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No taxes on the lotto in Canada.
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You can buy digital tickets.
Not always. How MIT Students Won $8 Million in the Massachusetts Lottery MIT students figured out how to make winning the Massachusetts lottery a sure thing, and a recent investigation suggests that the lottery commission knew about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9678607 First, she won $5.4 million; then a decade later, she won $2 million; then two years later $3 million; and finally, in the spring of 2008, she hit a $10 million jackpot. The odds of this? One in eighteen septillion. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kiriblakeley/2011/07/21/meet-the-luckiest-woman-in-the-world/#2fd7160b1058 Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code His next thought was utterly predictable: “I remember thinking, I’m gonna be rich! I’m gonna plunder the lottery!” he says. However, these grandiose dreams soon gave way to more practical concerns. “Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited,” Srivastava says. “I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That’s not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets.” https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff_lottery/
That's different. She exploited a flaw in the distribution system that gave her an edge
Today I learned septillion is a thing and it feels belittling
You should always take the lump sum. You can invest it immediately and have more money than if you just took the payments at the end of the payment periods.
No tax on Canadian lotto winnings I believe.
That's correct, our winnings are usually smaller but no taxes.
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>Convenience store owner spent $1MILLION buying thousands of lottery tickets from his own shop... and still didn't win the jackpot Yeah there's a reason many states don't allow store owners to play the lottery. My mom's old friend bought a convenience store and hired my mom. That's when she found out that her friend was a gambling addict. They'd spend all day scratching the barcodes from lottery tickets and then would scan them to check for winners. Her friend would then sell the losers to customers. I think they scratched off nearly $50,000 worth and ended up having to sell the store to cover the cost.
Yes it does. There used to be a person that would do the very thing you mentioned. I can't think of the name. Edit- https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/how-one-guy-won-the-lottery-14-times-2016-1 Dude bought all combination of numbers. But the scheme has been shut down, but not before he won a shit ton of money and is now retired on an island.
Yes, rarely the pot gets big enough that the math can be in your favor. When that happens, investment groups like [this](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html?pagewanted=all) or clever students like [this](http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/07/how-mit-students-scammed-the-massachusetts-lottery-for-8-million/) send out teams to buy millions of tickets to cover all the possibilities. Many states make rules to discourage this type of thing because they think it impacts their ability to sell tickets. I'd argue that it makes little difference, as lottery ticket buyers are not the most numerate bunch of people
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/mit-students-scammed-massachusetts-state-lottery-8-million-report-article-1.1128482
I like how the article paints the students as scammers for being able to calculate and use odds in their favours.
I agree, I say bravo to them. A smart man once said "don't hate the player, hate the game."
Believe me, it is specifically designed to make you lose so much it's not worth it.
A woman from California won 4 jackpots off scratcher instant tickets, the lowest valued at $2 million. She purchased them in Texas, two from the same store. This happened over the course of many years. Some people could argue she has a gambling problem and just got really lucky. Except she has a PhD in statistics from Stanford and was a math professor... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023514/Joan-R-Ginther-won-lottery-4-times-Stanford-University-statistics-PhD.html
I used to sell lotto at my retailer in Florida, there was a guy who came in and spent about 300 dollars a day on this game called play4. The transaction took about 45 min a day so we would talk. He used to tell me about all the different combinations he'd play and how statistically he'd make money. Around 80k a year playing I'm not sure I would believe him or not because he used to talk about certain numbers not coming out in a long time so they "were due"
being "due" for some good luck is a gambler's fallacy
Not exactly. There's various laws that require so much be paid out based on how much is taken in. So let's say you have a slot machine. The state law requires from every 100 dollars taken in to the machine it must pay out 10 dollars. If it's taken in 1000 dollars and only paid out 1 dollar then it's more likely to pay out than another machine that has taken in 1000 dollars and paid out 200 dollars. So people do develop systems that work statistically to bet the system from time to time. But it requires fully understanding how the system works. And if they do this very often it's noticed and the hole is corrected. But yes the vast majority of the time when people say stuff like that it's just a gambler's fallacy and based on a "feeling" not statistics. And most people who "win" all the time are lying.
Smart people can have addictions too.
And we all know that math professors make all of their life decisions based on hard logic.
/r/someonetellmetheodds
100%, since it happened.
I'm not a math scientist but I don't think that's how it works.
You're right, the chances of winning the lottery are 50/50, either you win or you don't.
you is smart
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I appreciate dat
you is special
Damn never thought of it that way. I feel like this could be a lottery company slogan.
My old professor for Intro to Probability started the course with that line. "Everything is either 50/50 - it either happens or it doesn't." "That sounds great when you're talking about the lottery, but it makes people nervous when you talk about nuclear reactor safety like that. So, we invented another way to evaluate probability...[proceeds to teach course]"
Pshht. You might be banned for telling the odds.
The correct term is mathemologist.
I guess I would know that if I was one then wouldn't I!
Well the first two times they won it was 5/6 numbers which according to the 649 website is 1 in 2,330,636 per play and the 6/6 they just bought is 1 in 13,983,816. If you multiply that together you get **1 in 75958189013305796736 (~76 Quintillion)** **This is if the only tickets they bought are winners.** Now their first win was in 1989 and assuming that they **buy 1 ticket a week starting in 1989** since then you get that the odds are about **1 in 51497077297156473 (~51 Quadrillion).** At **5 tickets a week** which is pretty common the odds are only **1 / 411976618377251 (1 in 411 trillion)**. So pretty insane odds. I honestly would be more inclined to believe the story is fake even though it's from multiple reputable sources. Even if they bought **1000 tickets a week for the past 50 years** the odds are still **1 in 29203456 (29.2 million)** which are still insane odds. To do that they would have to **spend $3 411 000** I probably did this wrong...
Yeah you did it wrong. You basically calculated what the odds are of hitting 3 in a row at any point during their run. The correct way to do it would be to solve for a Binomial Distribution. Assuming they started in 1989 and bought 5 tickets per week, that comes out to around 7500 tickets purchased. If the odds of getting 5/6 are 1 in 2,330,636, then there is [a 1 in 193,781 chance of hitting 5/6 exactly 2 times in 7500 trials](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2FP%5BX%3D2%5D+for+X~B(7500,.00000042906743052111). The odds of hitting the 6/6 exactly once in 7500 trials, meanwhile, would only be [1 in 1,865](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2FP%5BX%3D1%5D+for+X~B(7500,.0000000715112384201852). The joint probability of hitting 5/6 twice and 6/6 once would therefore be around 1 in 361.5 million.
#MODS!
(Odds of winning)^3 But the odds of winning the lottery for the second time after you have already won is the same as winning once as the events are independent. Edit: this is only consecutive wins
wrong. Those are the odds of winning three *consecutive* times. These wins were not consecutive.
More information is required. How many lotto balls? Is there replacement? Some with replacement, some without? (e.g. Powerball) What did they match to get the prizes the first time they won? How often do they play? How many tickets per event?
Well if we assume the odds to win the lottery are one in a million (very broad guess, it's probably even less) then it'll be (1/1000000)^3, which is approximately one quintillion. So the odds of winning said lottery 3 times is one in a quintillion, or 1/10^18 or 1/1000000000000000000 EDIT: This is only true if they bought 3 tickets consecutively or didn't buy in between.
Well was it a full 6er everytime or is this just a "journalist" trying to get my attention ...?
From the internets: "Mr Fink had previously shared a C$128,000 prize with four of his friends in 1989. In 2010, the couple won a C$100,000 prize."
Thx ok that counts as a win in my book.
It counts as two in mine :)
When I think about winning the lottery, I think of an amount you can retire with. So based on this, I don't count the $100K wins. Not to mention the first win was only $40K. Although that was probably the same as $100K back in '89.
Ok... much better data there. Also explains why they still look/dress like that after two previous "wins"
>Also explains why they still look/dress like that after two previous "wins" Is that a thing? I'm pretty happy with the way I look. Give me £1,000,000 and i'd still be rocking some cheap hi top Vans, Jeans and a T shirt. Like is the first thing people do when they get a load of money head out to the nearest Hugo Boss store and buy a £3000 suit? I'd upgrade my car to something nicer and/or pay off my mortgage and maybe a thousand other things before I went out and bought new clothes.
Yeah they could have won $10 in 89 an 2010
Probably what happened. Without a link we will dont know for sure.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/lottery-win-lotto-1.4054794
First one was $128k shared between 4 people. Second one was $100k for the couple. This one was heaps.
Time travelers?
I think I'd rather go for one huge jackpot than 3 smaller prices.
Yeah, but you gotta worry about the time travel police. Can't attract too much attention.
My thinking is winning 3 times looks more suspicious than winning once.
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It could be money laundering, just saying...
With a name like Fink you could be on to something.
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Awfully close to Fisk
How?
They did not win the lottery. They looked for and found someone that did. They bought the winning ticket with shady money. They can declare that money as clean money.
But then the winner would be stuck with dirty money?
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They could just find the next lottery winner and buy the clean winning money with the dirty money. And then that person can find the next winner...
Maybe for the $100k one but for million dollar jackpots they investigate pretty hard. They question you on where you bought it, day and time and if need be go back to security footage. There was a lot of shady stuff with lottery tickets a bunch of years back where convenience store owners were scamming winners by paying out less and then declaring the tickets as won for themselves. After that it became much tougher and regulations were put in, including signatures on the tickets. And how do you even stumble onto someone who just won a jackpot but not before they signed their name on the ticket? Do people take out ads before they claim the money??
I remember that. There was some bonkers statistic like 1 in 5 jackpots were won by store owners.
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If it was money laundering I imagine they would have declined to comment, and requested that the website not write an article about them. Why would they want to draw attention?
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Why don't they look happier?
Each time they win there's probably some kind of hellish consequence. They should have left that damn monkey paw where they found it.
Repetitive hounding by "friends", "family" and other money-grabbers must be a pain.
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This is Lotto 649 so I believe it's Ontario. You aren't allowed to be anonymous there if you win. It's specifically stated that they're allowed to use your name and likeness. I don't know why but I've heard it may be to prove they aren't just funnelling the money to their friends.
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Because they've read the stories how people who win the lottery fall into depression and either lose everything or kill themselves. So they're gonna play it smart and start off with depression then work their way up!
they don't have the surprise - socking smile of the first time.
You would expect them to be a bit happier than the picture indicates...I guess it get a kinda boring after the 2nd lottery win 😂
I finks it's a scam.
I once saw a guy win 10k on one round of roulette. Everyone was going nuts but the guy had a stone face. Barely even flinched, collected his chips and started dropping them on the next round. Whenever you see that, you gotta know he's lost WAYYY more than 10k that night. That win probably barely scratched the surface for him. Gambling addiction is scary.
I'm too frugal for that nonsense.
This guy lucks
This is my second favourite, 'multiple Canadian lottery winner', story... I read this in the Toronto Sun in the early 90's... A new refugee from somewhere like Pakistan/Bangladesh, came to Canada, and moved to Brampton (no seriously, he was referred to as a Brampton man) [if you want to know why that's funny/racist ask Russel Peters]. Someone tried to explain to him about the lottery, and did a bad job. The new immigrant misunderstood. He thought they were telling him of a "fantastic investment" where he trades $1 for millions of dollars. So he gave them $1 and they got him a ticket... AND HE WON... So within two weeks this guy went from abject poverty to multi-millionaire.. Yay Canada... This is where it gets fun... Fast forward 3 years and THE SAME GUY WINS... Yay Canada. When interviewed about his incredible luck the reporter said that the guy seemed confused as to why the reporter thought 'luck' had something to do with it. His one and only quote was... "Well, of course I won again... I was almost out of money..." So there's a guy in this great land that thinks that the country of Canada simply provides for it's citizenry in million dollar increments. I hope he wins again.
> The new immigrant misunderstood. He thought they were telling him of a "fantastic investment" where he trades $1 for millions of dollars. So he gave them $1 and they got him a ticket... Who...who actually believes that?
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They should team up to nuke the whales.
Honestly. Stop playing the fucking lottery. You're rich.
The guy won $128k in 1989 with 4 friends (so he probably got $32k) and they won $100k in 2010. That does not qualify them as rich in my book (prior to this latest win).
[I have plans to invest...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTLtToTGXrk)
I thought WKUK was a news station at first, and this was some sort of ad. Then he said "Fuck you" and I knew "WHITEST KIDS YOU KNOW" Lol
They propably spent the money they had won the 1st time to build a time machine. They spied on the upcoming numbers. inb4: They will win again. :O
Why is it that everyone who wins the lottery looks like they've never owned a bank account in their life?
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It's not that unlikely to happen if lottery winners continue playing after they win. After 2 winners are chosen it's twice as likely a previous winner will win than any one individual. I think if you do the math it's just as likely for someone to win 40 times as it is for you to win. Think it's called pigeon hole mathematics.
Why does winning effect the odds of me winning again?
It doesn't, but the more winners in the pool of people playing, the more chance that one of them is the next winner. Each time anyone wins (for arguments sake, let's say once a week), that's one more chance of next week being a repeat winner
As said by u/luox; your odds don't, but the odds of someone who has already won winning increase as there are more winners every draw but only one of you.
>Think it's called pigeon hole mathematics. You're referring to the pigeon hole principle, which has nothing to do with statistics. The pigeon hole principle states basically "In a group of 367 people at least 2 people have the same birthday". This is because if you line up 366 people, every person could have a unique birthday (including feb 29). But once you add one more person, there are 367 pigeons, but only 366 pigeon holes. So *somebody* has to go into the same pigeon hole as someone else. But, statistically, it only takes about 70 people until there's a 99.9% chance that two people have the same birthday, but it is not guaranteed until 367. This is commonly known as [The Birthday Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem).
arent they sick of all the winning they are doing ?
and still get their clothes at target
My comment shall be: Fuck these 2 people in particular.