re: Cashier at store told me one guy has spent $4000 on Powerball

Identical boy/girl doesn't exist. If there are twins that are boy/girl, they are fraternal.

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Slackster, there is a distinction in statistics between probability and odds. Not quite OT material but this might help.

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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.

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.

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Yours odds improve from 1 in 292,000,000 to 1 in 146,000.

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From the article I linked:

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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

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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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Cashier at store told me one guy has spent $4000 on Powerball

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A drop in the bucket.

Over 200 million combinations across the nation were sold for the last draw .Over 200 million with nearly 100 million combinations still remaining.

Zero winners. Staggering .

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According to this article you'd have to spend 300 million on lotto tickets to get 50/50 odds

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To be exact, you would have buy 50% of the possible combinations, so at $2 per combination, you would have to buy $292,201,338.

The trouble part of that article, is this incorrect meme that it was being spread on social media:

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A meme circulating on social media claims that if the Powerball winnings ($1.3 billion at the time) were evenly distributed among the United States’ population of roughly 300 million, everyone would receive $4.33 million, solving poverty. But that does not add up: 1.3 billion divided by 300 million would actually leave $4.33 per person. (Side note: The country’s population is currently estimated at 325 million).

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$4.3 million times 300 million citizens = $1.3 QUADRILLION.

AND it's no wonder people think the solution is to take from the rich; they have no conceptualization of math whatsoever.

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Yours odds improve from 1 in 292,000,000 to 1 in 146,000. That is pretty damn significant.

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If you got everyone in Tiger Stadium to purchase ~$5,700 in Powerball tickets you could guarantee that someone in the stadium would win the jackpot.

You read all of these odds that are absurd and meant to show you how ridiculous your chances are, but that puts a pretty positive spin on things.

I'll never understand the people who call it a stupid tax and ridicule those who play. I think it is absolutely incredible that you can pay $2 and win a $930M cash jackpot, yet all people can talk about is how slim your chances are going to be.

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Do you think the computer didnt repeat any combinations? He obviously didnt hand pick 2000 tickets

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My math could be wrong, because this thread is full of funky math, but I believe the probability of the QPs picking 2000 random numbers without repeating any of the same combinations is 99.317536%, so it is pretty safe to assume they were all unique.

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good chance this guy walked in carrying $4k in cash.

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Or a debit card.

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According to this article you'd have to spend 300 million on lotto tickets to get 50/50 odds

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Do people really need an article to confirm this? Can't anyone here explain how this works step by step? If you understand what division does, you ought to be able to explain how to think about this problem.