How about "No thank you" or "Because I don't want to play"

Why are we bound explain what we do and don't do?" Here's a piece of advice Jen, when people ask you why you are doing something tell them nothing. They will quickly stop asking personal questions.

Didn't she say "snappy?"

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

OBK #55

1998 Lincoln Continental - Sold
Max 1984 300TD 285,000 miles - Sold
The Dee8gonator 1987 560SEC 196,000 miles - Sold
Orgasmatron - 2006 CLS500 90,000 miles
2002 C320 Wagon 122,000 miles
2016 AMG GTS 12,000 miles

at the risk of being "infracted".....

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"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

great! so what part of this is 'snappy'?

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Jennifer
90 350sdl

Uh, nope. Each lottery is an independent event.

Suppose you buy one ticket a per week for 380,000 weeks. What are your chances of winning at week 380,001? The same as in week 1.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

"you won't win even if you play"

or maybe "you can't win whether you play or not"

both are true.

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1984 300TD

You're probably thinking about the Gambler's Fallacy -- assuming that one random event can predict another. And you are correct that any event is separate and does not effect any subsequent event (if it is a fair system, but let's just assume it is).

Yess, they're independent events and there are rules for combining independent events to produce a combined probability.

Think of how the probability of the single event is computed -- as a product of fractions. repeating any single event will return the same probability for each single event. Just as a coin toss is always 50-50.

But what is the probability of getting only 1 head in 3 tosses? = 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2= 1/8. And so forth.

What is the probability of getting at least 1 head in 3 coin tosses? = 1- (1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2) = 7/8ths chance.

And so on.

Now use the same logic with the lottery. It has a 1/300M chance of paying off for you in one event.

B

Yes right. I thought that's what I was saying. This is a maybe a variation of the gambler's fallacy, the lightning never strikes twice in the same spot fallacy. The gambler believes that by playing the same five numbers each week that he will eventually strike it rich. ie., the gambler who believes that lightning never strikes twice in the same place is asking the following question: What is the probability that this sequence of numbers will show up at least once in 1040 tries?

It actually works in roulette. The odds of hitting any single number are 35:1. (let's leave out zeros and double zeros for now) I bet you a dollar that if you record every single number which lands that the distribution will be quite normal. Odds are that the gambler who lays his chips on the same number every time the wheel spins will hit once out of every 35 times, even though the odds are 35:1 everytime the wheel spins. So the odds of hitting at least one #24 at roulette is exactly one every 35 spins (use the 'or' rule, pr(PvQ) = pr(P)+pr(Q) Works if your bankroll is large enough. Same with craps.

It's quite amusing in a nerdy way to see why the lightning strikes fallacy works in logic. PvQ is logically equivalent to not-P implies Q.

Let P be pr. that I'll get a heads on the first toss, and Q be the pr. that I'll get a heads on the second toss. That's logically equivalent to saying if I don't get get a heads on the first toss then I'll get a heads on the second toss!

So applied to the lottery, in theory you'd will strike it rich if you stayed in it long enough, somewhere in the realm of a half a million lifespans. If it were me, I'd stick with roulette, minus those infernal zeros and double zeros of course.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

I say "When you win the jackpot I will start buying them."

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Satan creates nothing: he only ruins everything. He does not invent: he tampers. And his followers are no different ~ Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigaṇ

Kuan, the distribution will be anything but "normal." I think you mean "equiprobable," if that's even a word.

Also, what you mean to say (I'm sure) is not that the spot will be hit once in every 35 turns, but that in the long run, the spot will be hit 1/35 of the time.

In theory, you will eventually win against any nonzero odds with probability one. But of course, not only will you not likely live long enough to achieve this, but the lottery in question probably won't either.

Let me add that probability one does not mean the same thing as "it will happen." It means that the probability measure of it "not happening" is zero. These are close, but definitely not the same thing.

I love this stuff!

I spend a lot of time trying to partial-out the statistical errors in spatial analysis of combined events. I do the stuff on the computer and then go out and look at what the analysis means when applied to what's real and on the ground. There are just so damned many factors that are inconsequential most of the time but under extraordinary circumstances, become significant, and some unpredictable (and unknown) number of them are contributors. Just stick them all under eta and be done? That works at the first approximation but when you start partialing-out the contributing factors life gets insanely complex.

I am increasingly of the belief that the tools used are insufficient because the underlying theory is insufficient. Somewhere there is a 10 year-old whose mind in 10 years, will encompass the problem and develop a better theory of probability that works with pathological conditional probabilities. I hope I live to see the day. For me, it would be as important as seeing the first Moon walk.

B

Yep, that's a good word actually. Equiprobable. Hey that spawns equiprobaby, equiprobability, equiprobe...

I'm not a math writer, thanks for the help.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

You can't win at roulette BTW. It's 37-1 to hit your number, but it only pays 35-1. Lottery's probably similar, especially after taxes.

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1984 300TD

The lottery's probability isn't similar at all. Fully half of the bets are siphoned off, leaving the rest to pay out to the winner.

That's like having half of the wheel showing numbers on which you can't even bet.

No problem. I've studied way too much maths.

I should also add that if the universe and sample set are finite, the naive interpretation of probability is correct. It's only when one or both of the two are infinite that things start to get interesting.

The lottery counts, since you really do have to play an infinite number of times to win (with probability one).

The other condition is when the sample value is a continuous, rather than a discrete value. The probability of ever eventually hitting any given open set is one, but the probability of hitting any given point is zero.