Would you rather have a guaranteed $100K or a 17% chance at $1 billion?

Take the guaranteed money.

I think I'd take the billion with those odds actually.

Another $100,000 today would be nice but it wouldn't change my life. $1 billion certainly would. So I'd take the 1 in 6 chance.

Reported for being super dumb. Maybe say $1 million so you sound less idiotic.

1 in 6 chance of landing $1,000,000,000 has an expected value of $167,000,0000 (167 million dollars)

You'd have to be a damn fool to take $100k

By a wide margin. The “break even” amounts for me would be ~ $15M / $1B. Even then, it would be smarter to roll the dice, but the guaranteed part is obviously the attractive feature for option 1.

I would go for the billion for sure.

Think about it. A 17% chance is slightly better than a 1 in 6 chance. Damn, that's good odds considering it means becoming ridiculously rich.

Another way to look at it is a billionis way more than 6 times higher than $100 K. LIke tremendousy more, so play it from that angle - it is worth risking, at least imo.

If I had no money or if $100,000 would greatly change my life in some way, I would take the $100,000, and that's what MOST people should do.

That's not my situation today though, so I would take the shot at $1 billion.

$100k would be (quite) nice but wouldn't change my life. $1 billion would and the EV is FAR higher.

Change it to $10 million vs 1/6 chance of $1 billion and I'd take the former though. Break-even point for me (neutral) would probably be somewhere between 800k and $2 million

No real odds work that way, so it’s silly.

$ 100,000 might look like good seed money to a young person with nothing. Not saying what a kid with nothing should do , just that it's a different calculation by age and situation.

I don't want a lot of money , would sell my chance for a few million. But really, I just don't care.

There comes a point in a major lottery like Powerball where the expected value of buying a ticket technically becomes positive. However, the odds of actually hitting it remain so remote that the likelihood of coming up empty before you die or stop buying tickets (whichever comes first) remains too great even though the EV is positive. I forget what the statistical term for this is, but the math ceases to be practical.

Here, it's +EV to roll the dice compared to taking the sure $100K. However, you only get one shot, and 5 out of 6 times you're going to get nothing.

For someone who thinks $100K isn't much money, they still think rolling the dice is the smart bet. For someone poorer, for whom that $100K would be anywhere from life changing to seriously useful, it may be more worth their while to just take the $100K. The alternative leaves them still broke far too often to justify taking the shot.

Edit: Though it's not the term I couldn't remember above, the idea does tie into another statistical concept whose name I do know: Risk of ruin. It's from gambling and is essentially the probability that a skilled gambler with a suitable bankroll might lose often enough to lose their entire bankroll despite their positive expectation.

There is a relative risk of ruin here. The rich man for whom $100K isn't much money doesn't really have any risk of ruin to consider. He's got assets either way. Go ahead and roll the dice.

However, the poor man for whom $100K is a big deal is facing an 83.3% risk of ruin, i.e. the probability that they don't roll a 6 and continue to not possess at least six figures of cash. For them, the risk of ruin chasing the billion is simply far too great to justify not taking the sure $100K

1 in 6 odds is still pretty low.

To those that said they’d take the shot at a Billion, would you bet your own $100K for a 1 in 6 chance of winning $1B? You only get one shot. I wouldn’t.

Yep, if I could be 100% assured that the dice roll was legitimate, could watch it in front of me knowing the chance is truly 1/6, I'd pull $100,000 out of my bank accounts right now for a roll at $1 billion.

A life changing amount of money for me would be around $1.2 million. With that I could quit my day job and be financially independent. Anything above that would obviously be great, but the returns are greatly diminished for achieving what I actually want in life. Given $100K is still less than 1/6 of the amount of money I consider life changing, I would take the dice roll.

Can't believe I'm agreeing with Newname, but when the math is the math...

That said, I think that most of us would take a cash payout for far, far less than the expected value. There is a number that, if guaranteed, also is guaranteed to radically change our lives.

For a lot of us who are mid-career or close to retirement, $100k is not that number.

I would take $20m or something like that and walk away without even thinking about rolling that dice. How much lower than that, I'm not sure. I'd probably walk for $10, really.

(Assume this is a tax free number).

Again, there are no real odds like this. It’s a no-brainer to take the chance for many many people for whom losing $100k doesn’t hurt that much, and nobody who actually has $1B to lose with 1/6 probability would be interested in the gamble for the prospect of making just $100k.

Your hypothetical is equivalent to someone trying to make a dollar with a 1/6 chance of losing $10K.