Huge Lottery

[smilergrogan]

[quote="Bob Juch]Mega Millions: 95% chance someone wins jackpot, official says
[/quote]
That roughly agrees with the calculation above, using 560 million tickets as noted by BiT:
(1 - 1/175,000,000)^560,000,000 = 0.04 = 4% chance of a given combination not being picked (so 4% chance of nobody winning)

[Bob Juch]

It has reached the totally ridiculous level of $640 MILLION.

I noticed that when I stopped in the local convenience store a few minutes ago, and was wondering if their sign was broke....

lb13

Cash value is $462,000,000 darn it.

[Bob Juch]

I'll buy a ticket when they start copying McDonald's line; billions and billions.

No, that's Carl Sagan.

[SportsFan68]

I play regularly so wasn't going to miss out on this record.

Even if I didn't play regularly, I would have bought a ticket today just to be part of the excitement. What a blast!

I bought five tickets on Powerball also; I could use the $60 million. Actually, I'd rather win the Powerball -- less publicity.

[TheConfessor]

While buying my tickets, a guy in line said that news reports indicated that all possible combinations have already been sold.

When you let the machine select the numbers randomly for your ticket, is there some means by which it will only select a combination not already picked (doesn't seem likely)? And a $640 million prize translates to maybe 1.3 billion tickets sold? (it's $1 a ticket, right, and ~50% goes to payout?). Because otherwise, it's still extremely unlikely that all 175 million combinations would have been sold in 1.3 billion tickets

For a given combination, the chance that it would not be selected in 1.3 billion tickets generated randomly is
(1 - 1/175,000,000)^1,300,000,000 = 0.00059, so there's a 0.059% chance any given combination will not have been selected (and a 99.941% chance it will have been). Taking all the combinations together, there would then be a 0.99941^175,000,000 = < 1 in 10^100 chance that all of them will have been selected.

The pot is progressive so assuming only 50% goes to the pool (and probably less to the jackpot peice), the current pool grew from 360 (Tuesday) to 640 (tonight). That is 280 million, meaning 560 million playing for tonight, not 1.3 billion.

I heard on Fox radio news that about 625 million tickets had been sold so far with a few hours still to go. So the most likely outcome would be to have about 3 or 4 winners, but as someone noted, there's maybe a 4% or 5% chance that there will be no winner.

[TheConfessor]

I'm also pretty skeptical, as no source I could find has agreed with his assertion. What I did find was that if no one wins tonight, the jackpot will grow to near-as-makes-no-difference a billion dollars!

I'll buy a ticket when they start copying McDonald's line; billions and billions.



I did have two tickets for Tuesday's drawing, but I didn't match a single number. I haven't gone by a store selling tickets since then and haven't gone out of my way for one.

I think you should hurry out and buy some tickets. Winning the $640 million jackpot would be an awesome audition hook for WWTBAM!

[Estonut]

If you live in Nevada, it's better to go to California than Arizona since AZ taxes non-residents 6% and CA has no tax on prizes.

I read a news blurb yesterday that said that California was hoping to have the winner as they'd get $100 million in taxes.

The news blurb was incorrect. California does not subject lottery winnings to the state income tax. And even if it did, the top marginal tax rate is 9.2%.

One of the local news stations here repeated the $100M figure, but they said it is what the SCHOOLS would receive from ticket sales. They also said that the schools get 32 cents of each dollar sold (I assume in CA only), but that computes to 312,500,000 tickets sold here, so those numbers sound wrong, too.

[MarleysGh0st]

I'll buy a ticket when they start copying McDonald's line; billions and billions.

No, that's Carl Sagan.

It's both.

[lilclyde54]

The Baboo came back from her Florida trip with Mega Millions tickets for both of us. This is our initial attempt to win this game. We hope there is something to that Beginner's Luck thing.

[MarleysGh0st]

I think you should hurry out and buy some tickets. Winning the $640 million jackpot would be an awesome audition hook for WWTBAM!

No, the audition hook would be when I started a national campaign against the "$640 million" annuity false advertising and gained a national reputation among the general public as an ungrateful, selfish jerk for doing so.

And, of course, I'd promise TPTB to run the same campaign against their annuity false advertising!

[CarShark]

That's the end of the ticket selling for tonight's drawing. Now it's time to make someone filthy rich...potentially.

I don't remember the last time I've been this excited about 3 minutes of television since the ending of Friends. If we see a bunch of high numbers, it'll sort out the birthday number players, and we could see a ten-figure jackpot.

What I wonder, though, is whether the hysteria will truly end if this massive sum of money gets won tonight. I wonder if some of the people who play once in a while will play more frequently, or whether people who only play once it gets above $100 million will start playing more often.

[ulysses5019]

May the odds be ever in your favor:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/30/yo ... ?hpt=hp_t1

[BackInTex]

May the odds be ever in your favor:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/30/yo ... ?hpt=hp_t1

I really like that picture of you. It makes you look like a really nice guy, debonair, fun and full of life.

Just thought I'd share.

[ulysses5019]

May the odds be ever in your favor:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/30/yo ... ?hpt=hp_t1

I really like that picture of you. It makes you look like a really nice guy, debonair, fun and full of life.

Just thought I'd share.

Gotcha fooled...and I wouldn't mind sharing...in your winnings...

[TheConfessor]

If anyone here happened to buy the numbers 02-04-23-38-46 and *23*, I'll give you a hundred bucks for it.

[minimetoo26]

If anyone here happened to buy the numbers 02-04-23-38-46 and *23*, I'll give you a hundred bucks for it.

I did!!!!!

Just not all on the same line.

But I'll take the hundred bucks...

[SportsFan68]

Let's see --

I have one 2.
I have one 4.
I have one 23.
I have three 38s.
I have one 46.
I have zero *23s.*

Bzzt! You are not a winner. Please try again.

[smilergrogan]

I always root for it to come up all consecutive numbers. It would be so fun to see people go nuts convinced it was rigged.

[CarShark]

Maryland's lottery board is saying that someone matched all six numbers. Still waiting for everyone else and the official announcement.

[Bob78164]

A winning ticket was sold in Baltimore County. No official word yet one whether other states also had winners. --Bob

[MarleysGh0st]

A winning ticket was sold in Baltimore County. No official word yet one whether other states also had winners. --Bob

Hey, we've got some BBs in Baltimore County!

Is there anything anybody would like to share?

[littlebeast13]

Well, I did better this time. First line once again had one number, third line actually had TWO! (And it was all high numbers, happened to hit the 38 and 46), but the megaball was two off, 21. Might have been a few bucks had I had the 23, dammit....

The lowest number I had on the whole strip was 7, so that doomed me there....

lb13

[minimetoo26]

It looks like it was just the one in Maryland. Second prizes haven't been sorted out yet, but the Californians get less since it's parimutuel there. They get around $227,000 rather than $250,000.

I won another $6 with my powerful MegaBall/Megaplier combo, so I still really lost, but am more satisfied than I would have been with $2.

The pygmy goats will just have to wait for now. They were going to get to graze indoors so they would never get rained on, but it is not to be...

[minimetoo26]

A winning ticket was sold in Baltimore County. No official word yet one whether other states also had winners. --Bob

Hey, we've got some BBs in Baltimore County!

Is there anything anybody would like to share?

I sincerely hope they stay under the radar for as long as possible. I wouldn't share even the information at this point!

But it would be awesome if it were to be one of us.

[minimetoo26]

Looks like another winner turned up in the search--real near beast! Could be a Wal*Mart shopper!