re: OFFICIAL: No winners in the powerball tonight...Wed drawing at 1.3 Billion

On somewhat of a tangent, the drawing Wednesday may be the first time the expected value of the Powerball is in your favor. For those of you who don't know, a positive expected value indicates a situation where you would expect a profit over the course of many samples. You basically take the cash value (less the purchase price of a ticket) of each Powerball prize and multiply it by the odds to win said prize. You do this for every prize, and then you do this for the odds you will NOT win a prize (-$2 X ~280,450,100 losers our of 292,201,338 possible combinations). You add up all of the products and you arrive at the expected value.

Assuming a single winner (no split jackpot) and only federal taxes (39.6%), the expected value of the Powerball will be a positive number if the cash payout is higher than $832M.

For a single winner, federal taxes, and LA state income taxes, the jackpot will have to reach nearly $924M for the expected value to be higher than $0.

Obviously a split jackpot throws a wrench in to all of this, but this may be the first time in history that the math says you SHOULD purchase a ticket.