Lotto odds: in their own words

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Mar 292008
 
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So tonight was the 8th birthday of the South African state lottery. To celebrate, they boasted some figures – figures we can use to work out the chances of winning over a million rand in the South African lottery.
They told us that the Lotto has contributed around 6 Billion rands to charity.
They told us that this amounts to 34% of the total earnings.
They told us that during the same 8 year period they made over 700 millionaires (just less than 100 a year).

So, 6 billion is 34% of 24 billion.
A lotto ticket costs R2.
That means 12 billion tickets were sold in these past 8 years.

700 millionaires, out of 12 billion tickets.

That’s great odds aint it.

Truly the lottery is a tax on stupidity.

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 Posted by silentcoder at 3:41 pm  Tagged with:
  • http://langly.org Kenneth

    My one friend once told me:
    “For 20 NOK ( 30 RAND ), I have a x -> inf better chance of becoming a millionaire”

    And no, I do not play. Just thought the comment was worth sharing.

  • http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

    Well I don’t play either, it just happens that the show is on during adbreaks in the Saturday night movie on one of the local channels, and it happens that I was watching that movie last night.

  • http://www.SysEx.com.na Uwe Thiem

    “6 billion is 34% of 24 billion.” Aj, have you become mathematically impaired? ;-)

    Uwe

  • http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

    OMG.
    It was very late when I wrote it, my brain was a little tired I guess.
    It should be 18 Billion of course.

  • Jay Smit

    From a mathematical standpoint the probability of winning for any given ticket is 1 in +-14 million. Which means that if the 12 billion tickets were evenly distributed (which they won’t be – when last did you choose 1 2 3 4 5 6 ;-) ) we _should_ have had about 850 winners in that time period.

    The moral of the story? I think it goes something like: Never challenge a porcupine to an arse-kicking contest!

  • http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

    So, the numbers roughly match the prediction… not heartening…

  • http://xdroop.com David Mackintosh

    Ah, but people do pick stupid sequences. See the Canadian 6/49 recently which included winning numbers 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, and the bonus number 43. In the Canadian game, you win the “second” prize if you have five of the six winning numbers plus the bonus number. 239 people nationally did just that. As a result, 239 people split a pool which normally only goes 3 or 4 ways.

  • http://girl-scout-cookie-sale-incentives.fakeedie.nx.cn/ i c u die

    This whole situation is SO absurd. Your post strikes as serious for you only. What can we do but make jokes about it?

  • http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

    Well. This wasn’t a very serious post, I just thought it would be fun to take their marketing figures and use that to show how unlikely anybody is to ever win… and how the lotto proves that there really IS a sucker born every minute.

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