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RE: Lottery vs. lightning page 2This is a discussion thread · 34 replies Gerry: [nq:1]How is the California lottery more of a scam than the casinos in Nevada? I noticed at my local 7/11 that the people playing the lottery seemed to be poorer people and they shouldn't be spending any money on that dang thing.[/nq]They're too poor to own a computer and get free advice on Usenet. Your best hope of saving them is talk to them when they're buying tickets. You think ?
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Wordsmith: Nobody forces anyone to buy lottery tickets.W : )
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gARY: [nq:1]How is the California lottery more of a scam than the casinos in Nevada? I noticed at my local 7/11 that the people playing the lottery seemed to be poorer people and they shouldn't be spending any money on that dang thing.[/nq]I notice, people should read the lotto guidelines, but they clearly don't! No 1: "Do not spend more than you are willing to lose". It is beyond me how anyone can play a game (ANY game) without fully understanding the rules!! Expect to lose? They do, indeed, gARY [nq:2]Lotteries are the biggest gambling scams around.[/nq] http://justservices.com/9ukp.html
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Brian Gordon: [nq:2]Lotteries are the biggest gambling scams around.[/nq]Well, to start, the casinos gives back 90%+ of what they take in, while the lotteries give back ~50%. Which sounds like the better bet? +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
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SpammersDie: [nq:2]How is the California lottery more of a scam than ... they shouldn't be spending any money on that dang thing.[/nq]The relationship between being poor and not having the financial sense to avoid the lotteries is pretty obvious... [nq:1]Well, to start, the casinos gives back 90%+ of what they take in, while the lotteries give back ~50%. Which sounds like the better bet?[/nq] The lottery is a voluntary tax on the financially stupid. Compared to most other taxing schemes pols can come up with, this is one I can live with...
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John Griffin: **don't panic...I moved your comments to the bottom, i.e., the only logical place. For your information, the question or comment comes before its answer in dialog. Learn that today, and then one more fact tomorrow, etc., and after a while you won't be clueless.**[nq:2]Lotteries are the biggest gambling scams around.[/nq] [nq:1]How is the California lottery more of a scam than the casinos in Nevada?[/nq] That's a stupid question. Neither is a scam. The lottery commissions openly admit that they return only half the money to ticket buyers. The casinos will happily tell you their advantage on every game. It's nowhere near the lottery's advantage. If you put 1,000,000 on a blackjack table, you'll end up with 990,000 if you know what you're doing. If you put 1,000,000 into lottery tickets, you'll end up with a headache. Don't do it. The idea is to buy a ticket with some discretionary money and then dream about getting 1,000,000 essentially free. [nq:1]I noticed at my local 7/11 that the people playing the lottery seemed to be poorer people and they shouldn't be spending any money on that dang thing.[/nq] I'm surprised to hear that someone would hang around a 7-11 polling people as to their financial status. I'm even more surprised that they told you. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that you just parroted something you heard somewhere.
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baggins: [nq:2]How many people have hit the lottery jackpot this year? How many people have been struck by lightening?[/nq][nq:1]Lots of people have been led to expect lightening from various diet scams, but fewer have actual experienced it. Anyway, ... as the numbers get bigger, while the bolt from the blue likelihood only changes with the weather and the seasons.[/nq] You can count this for and against til the cows come home, my stock answer is you have as much chance as the next person...after all somebody eventually wins..it might just be you... Nature of luck...curious question this...has nothing to do with how 'bad' you are or how 'good'... and so we try and stack the odds in our favour..mathematically, theoretically...and I'm just wondering if after all these years of analysing, if I shouldn't just go and get the damn 'quik-pick' rather..Anyone have any statistics on how often the 'quik-pick' actually produces the win? baggins
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Jeff G: [nq:1]You can count this for and against til the cows come home, my stock answer is you have as much chance as the next person...[/nq]Which in reality is incomprehensibly small. Lotteries, at least so-called super lottos amount to nothing more than a stupidity tax. Most people can't even comprehend how small a 1 in 41 million chance (for example, the California Super Lotto) actually is. And your odds don't improve over time, unless you play a greater number of tickets. I once wrote a computer simulation that produced 12,000+ six-pair random number sequences per second, ranging from 01 to 47 (each sequence simulated a lotto draw), and comparedit to one static set of six pairs (which simulated a lotto ticket). The program ran continuously for over a week before a match for all six pairs came up. That's when it finally dawned on me just how stupid it is to waste money on this nonsense. Save up your money and take it to the nearest casino. Or horse racing track. Or play the stock market. Or do anything else with it except flush it down the toilet playing a lottery. At least some people have a sense of humor about it. Here in Calif. we're seeing huge billboard advertisements on our roads for E-Trade, a stock trading company that read: Someone is going to win the lottery this week. JUST NOT YOU.
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John Griffin: [nq:2]You can count this for and against til the cows come home, my stock answer is you have as much chance as the next person...[/nq][nq:1]Which in reality is incomprehensibly small.[/nq] Apparently your comprehension is a bit deficient. Lots of people can easily comprehend it. [nq:1]Lotteries, at least so-called super lottos amount to nothing more than a stupidity tax.[/nq] Dumb. People are willing to part with a spare dollar or two for the game aspect. To others, lotteries are a hobby. They don't cost any more than many other hobbies which have no mechanism for returning anything. If I needed more hobbies, I'd rather spend five bucks on lotto tickets than spend thousands on building a model railroad, for example. [nq:1]Most people can't even comprehend how small a 1 in 41 million chance (for example, the California Super Lotto) actually is.[/nq] I won't believe that until I see the evidence that led you to say it. I don't think you know what most people can or can't comprehend. [nq:1]And your odds don't improve over time, unless you play a greater number of tickets.[/nq] I'd say "roger that," but "duh that" works better. [nq:1]I once wrote a computer simulation that produced 12,000+ six-pair random number sequences per second*, ranging from 01 to 47 ... a lotto ticket). The program ran continuously for *over a week before a match for all six pairs came up.[/nq] All you had to do is ask, and someone would have shown you how to design and code a program to simulate a lottery. What lottery draws pairs of numbers? Did you mean to say you used six two- digit numbers?! Why did you allow duplicates? The numbers show that you did: 12000 per second (8088 processor?) for "over a week" comes to nearly 8,000,000,000 trials. The number of permutations of 47 things taken six at a time is 7,731,052,560. What a freakin' wild coincidence that you had only one winner instead of the expected 720...NOT! The chance of fewer than 496 winners in that many trials is less than .001. [nq:1]That's when it finally dawned on me just how stupid it is to waste money on this nonsense. Save up ... Or play the stock market. Or do anything else with it except flush it down the toilet playing a lottery.[/nq] Fool, it's funny that you went to all that trouble and did it wrong to reach that stupid conclusion. What casino, track, stock, etc., can I get for the dollar I casually hand over to a lottery retailer because it's taking up more space than it's worth in my pocket? A dollar is a trivia item. The thought that I "might win" is worth at least one trivia. [nq:1]At least some people have a sense of humor about it. Here in Calif. we're seeing huge billboard advertisements on our roads for E-Trade, a stock trading company that read: Someone is going to win the lottery this week. JUST NOT YOU.[/nq] Dumb. The guy who won last time drove past one of those billboards seven times in the week before he won. By the way, I buy less than $100 of lottery tickets in a typical year. I probably spend twice that on Labatt beer. If I put all my beer money into lottery tickets, I might have won billions of dollars by now.
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Jeff G: [nq:2]I once wrote a computer simulation that produced 12,000+ six-pair ... week* before a match for all six pairs came up.[/nq][nq:1]All you had to do is ask, and someone would have shown you how to design and code a program to simulate a lottery. What lottery draws pairs of numbers? Did you mean to say you used six two- digit numbers?![/nq] Sets of six number-pairs (two digit numbers ranging from 01-47). [nq:1]Why did you allow duplicates?[/nq] I didn't. [nq:1]The numbers show that you did: 12000 per second (8088 processor?) for "over a week" comes to nearly 8,000,000,000 trials. ... instead of the expected 720...NOT! The chance of fewer than 496 winners in that many trials is less than .001.[/nq] You weren't big on math in school, were you? The number of possible permutations has diddly squat to do with how often a given set of random numbers will appear.. i.e. you might get a given set 500 times in 8 billion runs, and another set 0 times. That's why odds given by state lotteries are worthless. If ALL possible sets are played on a given draw, ONLY THEN does someone have a chance at the stated odds (in the case of CA Super Lotto, 1 in 41 million).
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