Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we're talking about the Ohio Super Lotto. (I don't think that's current any more, but I'm using it as an example because I know how it worked, because it was current when I still watched television and thus saw the lottery adverts.) The population of the state is well over ten million people, so if 30% of them buy tickets (which is, I'm pretty sure, conservative), and of the people who buy tickets if the average expenditure is only $10 (which is also almost certainly a lowball estimate), that's $30 million in tickets sold. The jackpot in this game went up by a million each time there was no winner, as I recall, and then reset, so a jackpot of $10 million implies it's gone up nine times, for a total of $270 million in ticket sales, conservatively, which makes every dollar's "worth" of tickets *actually* worth less than four cents. In practice, I'm pretty sure it's actually worse than that, because the ticket sales increase as the jackpot rises, and because my figures are, in a word, kind. And Ohio has since done away with the Super Lotto in favor of (presumably) even more lucrative (i.e., overpriced) games.

mlipphardt, just to clarify, are you suggesting that Mila Kunis should have been cast as Tesla in The Prestige?

Regarding the difference in her eye colors: to me it looks like she has basically the same colors in both eyes, or at least very similar, but the inner (more brownish) color takes up a larger percentage of the area of one iris, and the outer (blue-grey-ish) color covers a larger percentage of the area of the other.

I suppose "well-educated" is relative to the bulk of society, but really, shouldn't a really good education include at least a basic prob-and-stats class? I mean, yes, sure, it improves his chances of winning, by epsilon, but it also increases his losses proportionately. If buying a $1 lottery ticket means on average you lose $0.9975, then buying $100 in tickets means you lose on average $99.75.

Of course, it's not quite that bad, because the lottery outfits have discovered that frequent small "winnings" (reduced losses) make people spend more on tickets. So in the real world a $1 lottery purchase may only lose you, on average, somewhere between thirty and seventy cents, depending on jurisdiction, and thus a $100 purchase loses you between thirty and seventy dollars. But that's still worse than never buying any and breaking even every time.

> I made nearly $90 back in winnings,

In other words, you're out $10 net, when all is said and done, i.e., 10% of the *official* list price of the tickets you bought. But since the tickets you bought are sold at *way* more than 10x markup over their real value, it was still not, fiscally speaking, a good investment.

Of course, if you figure you got $10 worth of enjoyment out of scratching the stupid things off, then it's no worse than spending $10 in quarters at the arcade, and 50% cheaper than spending $15 to pay Laser Tag for a minute and a half. But personally I don't understand how anyone who has even a vague understanding of the probabilities involved could get $10 worth of entertainment out of scratching off a hundred lottery tickets. What a boring and tedious way to spend three minutes!

> but I certainly don’t believe I actually
> improved my chances of cracking The Big One.

Technically you did, but not by enough to be worth anywhere near the $10 you spent, or anywhere near $1 for that matter.

And I'm assuming here, benefit of the doubt, that you got the $90 back in cash, not in "free" tickets. (Free tickets would be worth only a fraction of a percent of their face value, so in that case you'd still be out nearly the full hundred bucks, though you could count the added joy of scratching off that many more tickets as an underwhelming benefit.)

I can't find it at all. I remember it being hilarious. Do you, perchance, have that link?

Those nuke subs must have leaked not only radioactivity, but also bozons.

Mila Kunis does have different-coloured eyes, but either I'm colour-blind or the difference is only small.
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