Lotto question

When the pot is in the $200m+ area often there are multiple winners. Say at $640M there are three winners. $207M per person. To avoid inflation and to get their money back right away, they would have to take the lump sum. Which would be about $140M. After taxes, they would earn about a negative 50% profit and get maybe $88m.

But good idea.

1. It would take too long to enter all possible combinations.

2. There could be multiple winners out there which could mean a winning share of less than $176M after taxes.

Something seems wrong with that math. I had to check the rules, it says there's 5 numbers 1-56 and a mega-number 1-46.

56*55*54*53*52*41 = 18,793,494,720

(subtracting 1 from each multiplier since you can't use the same number twice).

Am I doing something wrong?

Crap, I just thought - the higher the first number, the more limited the next successive numbers are and so on. I can't do that math, but I'm sure that's where the answer lies.

To answer the original question: I think it would take a fair amount of time to fill out 176 million lotto tickets. Factor in the time it takes to generate all the combinations, you'd have to have several hundred people working on it, even then you'd not be guaranteed the full jackpot.

Money Mann wrote:

1. It would take too long to enter all possible combinations.

2. There could be multiple winners out there which could mean a winning share of less than $176M after taxes.

You can play electronically. But only in Illinois.

Illinois also withholds 3% in your winnings.

Because of the risk of multiple winners this strategy isn't worth it until the jackpot is in the billion dollar range and the lump sum is in the 750 million range.

You would win big if you are the only winner or you split it with only one other winner. More than 2 and you see a huge loss, so you assume you're the only one with this strategy.

I hope nobody wins, then next drawing will be crazy huge.

Saul Goodman wrote:

Something seems wrong with that math. I had to check the rules, it says there's 5 numbers 1-56 and a mega-number 1-46.

56*55*54*53*52*41 = 18,793,494,720

(subtracting 1 from each multiplier since you can't use the same number twice).

Am I doing something wrong?

I don't play, but I don't think you need to pick the numbers in order. Your formula is assuming you need to pick the right numbers in the right order. That would make it much harder, not that it's not already hard enough.

i love peepees wrote:

I hope nobody wins, then next drawing will be crazy huge.

The odds of nobody winning this one are slim.

Why would anyone buy a lottery ticket for tonight's Mega Millions drawing when a huge amount is taken out as taxes? Not worth it.

The correct math is (56 choose 5) times (46 choose 1). Google will give you this value, which is a bit less the 176 million.

In Excel, =COMBIN(56, 5)*46

Saul Goodman wrote:

To answer the original question: I think it would take a fair amount of time to fill out 176 million lotto tickets. Factor in the time it takes to generate all the combinations, you'd have to have several hundred people working on it, even then you'd not be guaranteed the full jackpot.

Even if you had 10,000 people working for you, all of the possible combinations couldn't be covered in 3 days.

Because whenever the prize is this big, it gets split 10+ ways.

On the news tonight it said if you filled out every combination and it took you 5 seconds a card it would take you 28 years to fill out 176 million cards. I am not going to bother with the math on that.

sdfafsda wrote:

Why would anyone buy a lottery ticket for tonight's Mega Millions drawing when a huge amount is taken out as taxes? Not worth it.

$1 isn't worth the chance for even as little as $1,000,000?

It's been done.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm