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Started By
Message
re: Cashier at store told me one guy has spent $4000 on Powerball
Posted on 1/13/16 at 8:12 am to Vandyrone
Posted on 1/13/16 at 8:12 am to Vandyrone
quote:
Slackster, there is a distinction in statistics between probability and odds. Not quite OT material but this might help.
Thank you, and that is what I mentioned in the edit of my post. However, that is not how the Powerball quotes its odds on its website. They explicitly state the "odds" of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338. In the traditional since of "odds", that should read 1:292,201,337, much like a coin flip landing on heads has the probability of 50% and odds of 1:1. The Powerball website and any 'odds' you see quoted there are called odds but are in fact probabilities listed as fractions. They say the odds are 1 in 292,201,338, but that actually represents the total successes, 1, over the total possibilities, 292,201,338.
Considering they use probabilities in the place of odds on their website, I don't see any reason for my math to have been incorrect or stated poorly in this thread, but this is the OT so I don't expect many people to have much of an understanding one way or the other.
Posted on 1/13/16 at 8:29 am to slackster
Where you ran into trouble was back on the first page when using the odds terminology of "1 in" to describe the effect on probability of buying $4000 worth of tickets.
From the article I linked:
Thus the reason for all the down votes and the claim from someone that you don't understand how odds works.
quote:
Yours odds improve from 1 in 292,000,000 to 1 in 146,000.
From the article I linked:
quote:
In everyday conversation when numbers or values aren’t given, the two terms are synonymous . If an event has a high probability, then it has high odds for happening. The incorrect usage arises when a person ascribes a mathematical value to either the odds or probability they are discussing
Thus the reason for all the down votes and the claim from someone that you don't understand how odds works.
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