Odds of winning the lotto?

[LZ_69]

Needless to say that we all could use a little more money (or rather lots of it), and since I have quite a few debts, I was having a disscusion today with a friend from work about that, and he said I should just win the Lottery (California Lottery in my case), I told him that the odds of winning that are astronomical! which in a sense it's true, but I wanted to sound and look extra smart by actually calculating the odds, but failed miserably because I couldn't remember the mathematical formula which I know there is one, I been looking for it on the web with no luck and the pages that seem to have some information are blocked by my work server.

Can anyone help?

[AnarchyintheUK]

I don't know what the odds are in the US but in the UK I believe you are more likely to get hit by lightening on your way to buy the ticket than you are you win any money from the ticket.

[sweet-t310]

Huzzah for the internets!

http://www.webmath.com/lottery.html

[back_blows]

It depends on the lottery and how many numbers you have to pick. In Canada, Lotto Super 7 (7 numbers matched) has odds of 1 in ~21 million.

[benson111]

1 in 45,057,474 unless you play the Powerball.
Your chances are 1 405,574,740, and that is only if you are the only person buying a ticket. The chances go up astronomically after that.

[LZ_69]

Damn! those are some harsh odds! yet sometimes people do win, I wonder how many people actually buy tickets and how many number combinations......

Interesting according to the page, it says that:

"Someone eating an oyster has a 1 in 12,000 chance of finding a pearl inside of it."

I heading my ass over the ocean!!

btw thanks Sweet-T310 and Benson.

[PuckJunkie]

1 in 45,057,474 unless you play the Powerball.
Your chances are 1 405,574,740, and that is only if you are the only person buying a ticket. The chances go up astronomically after that.

Unless this is some odd lottery where they draw the winner's name out of a giant hat with all the entries - as opposed to the kind here in Texas, where you have numbers and hope they match the ones drawn - the chances of winning the lottery are unaffected by the number of entries. Your payout is affected, of course, and thus the expected return changes (probably still negative!), but the odds of being a winner remain the same.