[ExI] Sigh

[BillK]

On 7/2/10, Damien Broderick wrote:
>  Hmmmmm, interesting--but I was talking about lotteries, where the number of
> tickets sold is known precisely in advance of drawing the winning numbers.
> Some people have won jackpots in the millions twice (as statistics suggests
> is inevitable), but I don't think they've been barred from entering the
> lottery again; to do so would look like an *admission* that some people are
> "lucky" or psychic or gained a corrupt influence, none of which would be
> acceptable PR.
>
>

True, but you were arguing with John about casinos.   ;)


I found this bit of maths discussion which claims that we shouldn't be
very surprised if people win the lottery more than once.


Quote:
In order to consider the probabilities with respect to the entire
process, you need to start asking questions like:

“How many lottery games are held each year?”
“How many tickets, on average, are sold over the course of each lottery?”
“How many tickets does the average lottery player buy over a four year period?”

“Instead of looking at Valerie’s chances alone, what are the chances
that anyone might have won two lottery tickets over a four year
period?”

When you dig into the actual math describing the entire process
instead of one incorrectly singled-out and poorly-defined example, the
numbers become much more reasonable and believable. More than 125
million American adults spend $45 billion annually on some 35,000
lottery games across 40 states. With 35,000 winning events randomly
spread across 125 million gamblers, it turns out that the likelihood
of having a single person win more than once is actually rather high.
There is actually more than a 90% chance that someone will win twice
after only 10,000 lotteries. So over the course of four years as
140,00 lotteries are held, you would actually expect more than 10
people to win twice. And indeed if you google lottery+win+twice you
get many more hits than the press would otherwise believe. (As an
aside, don’t let the higher-than expected odds of winning deceive you.
While you can win, you are highly unlikely to make money doing it.)
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BillK