The Lotto

Last night as I hastily cleaned my house in preparation of a Halloween Party, I was inspired to get a large diet Coke. I stopped at Lowe's and picked up two shower heads and some tile grout - went to Sac n Pac and poured the big drink. And at the register, the enticingly fronted TV screen said "Jackpot $19 Million". Crap - OK, so I bought five quick picks - three for the "Powerball" and two for the "Texas Lotto". This morning, after getting some coffee and after painting my kitchen cabinets, I checked my numbers. WOW......I did not get a single number - not one. And since that was my objective, I WIN! In fact, it seems that the odds were with me last night beneath the crescent moon.


But really, to put these things in perspective, the odds of drawing any winning sequence is about one in 195,249,054. Even though the odds of flipping heads on a quarter is one in two, I don't win that one very much either. And check out this cool fact - with 400,000,000 tickets in play, the probability that one winning combination exists is 0.0132%. And if you should win a grand prize, 38% goes to taxes. Given all of the prize options, the probability exists that you will get a return of 0.1358 cents per dollar invested. But then, of course, you could always never win for the odds of that are exactly the same - and that would just be the statistical luck of the draw. 


Odds that a person between the age of 18 and 29 does NOT read a newspaper regularly: 3 to 1
Odds that an American adult does not want to live to age 120 under any circumstances: 3 to 2
Odds of injury from fireworks: 19,556 to 1
Odds of injury from shaving: 6,585 to 1
Odds of injury from using a chain saw: 4,464 to 1
Odds of injury from mowing the lawn: 3,623 to 1
Odds of fatally slipping in bath or shower: 2,232 to 1
Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1
Odds of being killed on a 5-mile bus trip: 500,000,000 to 1
Odds of being killed sometime in the next year in any sort of transportation accident: 77 to 1
Odds of being killed in any sort of non-transportation accident: 69 to 1
Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1
Odds of being killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1
Odds of being murdered: 18,000 to 1
Odds of getting away with murder: 2 to 1
Odds of being the victim of serious crime in your lifetime: 20 to 1
Odds of dating a supermodel: 88,000 to 1
Odds of being considered possessed by Satan: 7,000 to 1
Odds that a first marriage will survive without separation or divorce for 15 years: 1.3 to 1
Odds that a celebrity marriage will last a lifetime: 3 to 1
Odds of getting hemorrhoids: 25 to 1
Odds of being born a twin in North America: 90 to 1
Odds of being on plane with a drunken pilot: 117 to 1
Odds of being audited by the IRS: 175 to 1
Odds of having your identity stolen: 200 to 1
Odds of dating a millionaire: 215 to 1
Odds of dating a supermodel: 88,000 to 1
Odds of writing a New York Times best seller: 220 to 1
Odds of finding out your child is a genius: 250 to 1
Odds of catching a ball at a major league ballgame: 563 to 1
Odds of becoming a pro athlete: 22,000 to 1