I think the lottery is a conspiracy

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist or anything, but I think the lottery could very well be a scam. It would be one of the easiest things to fake, and allow whoever's in charge to rake in millions and millions of dollars.

All they have to do is hire someone for 30 grand or whatever, have them sign some really intense sure-proof document saying that they will never ever reveal the truth, and have that person say they won. That's it. And then, just like every single lottery winner in history, that person disappears from the public spotlight less than three days later and you never hear about them again.

People always say, 'no no no. I know someone who knows someone who won the lottery.' That's how it is always is. They know someone who KNOWS someone. But nobody personally knows another person who's won over a million dollars in the lottery (and unfortuantely, if you do know someone and say so in this thread, then it will still be me knowing someone who knows someone who won the lottery - so it won't change my opinion - unless of course, you yourself have won a million-plus in the lottery. Still, I guess you could be lying).

I can see people winning smaller prizes, like $100,000 or $200,000, because in the grand scheme of these big lotteries, that's not that much money. But I really think that these million dollar plus winners are fakes.

The reason I'm posting this is so all you idiots don't buy lottery tickets anymore.
 
I live in Las Vegas. I've met people who've hit megabucks, and jackpots. It's extremely taxed though. So for the 1 million, you only get like half.
 
Sick of loosing huh?


You know, the best way to improve your odds is to buy a seccond ticket! That will double your odds! :grin:

- Mikko
 
You'd have to pay somebody a heck of a lot more than 30k for them to shut up for the rest of their life.
besides lotteries are already making tons of money off the interest of the money that is spent purchasing lottery tickets.

The reason most lottery winners drop off the face of the earth is because something like 2/3's of them end up going bankrupt :) and that is a true statement.
I know someone who knows someone who heard that someone won a lottery...

I don't know, it's possible, but most of these lotteries are tied to education or health care, etc. So it would have to be the government scamming people...
The real scam is where most of the money actually ends up, rather than education, etc. And why states with lotteries still end up with huge deficits after they incorporate a lottery and still end up cutting education funding etc.

Jason
 
I don't think the lottery is a conspiracy persay. I don't think the 'powers that be' are pocketing all of the winnings. However, years ago, when I was a kid, they sold NYSTATE on the idea of the lottery because the proceeds were going to solely be for education. However, the politicians NEVER EVER talk about where that money is going any more. Thats what I think is sketchy!
 
mikkowilson said:
Sick of loosing huh?


You know, the best way to improve your odds is to buy a seccond ticket! That will double your odds! :grin:

- Mikko
Click to expand...

You Europeans and your wacky math skills.

Everyone knows the odds are 50/50.

You either win or you lose.
 
*takes deep breath*

The lottery IS a scam in the sense that the odds are stacked against you, you always lose to the house, thats the whole point, call it legalised robbery if yo will.

Its lures you into a false sense of winning, or the possibility of winning, how ironic it is that the possibility is extremly slim.

And not buying a second ticket will not "double your luck"

The odds are not 50/50 either, lets set an exmaple,

Lets take the UK lottery as an example:

you have six balls, each ball is numbered 1 to 49 (I think, been I loooog time since I played)

The fisrt ball you have 6/49 Chance (you can pick six numbers)
the second ball you have 6-1/(48-1) since one ball has already been picked, and you only have I less picks

let Pn = number user Picks
Bn = Ball number

so the formulae is Sigma E[n= 1 to 6] =[ [P-n]/[49-n] ] !



[6/49*5/48*4/47*3/46*2/45*1/44*]*Inverse = 13983816

1 in 13 Million Aprrox, now if you buy one ticket its 13M/ 1 i.e. 1 in 13 Million change (1/13M Odds), if you buy two tickets thats 13M/2 or 1 / 6.5 M Change odds (1/6.5M odds) ;


Thus to get 50/50 odds i.e 1/2 you need to to buy half of 13 Milion tickets, or more precisely 13983816/2 = 6991908 tickets to get 50/50 odds.

Of course if you want 1/1 chance then you need to buy 13983816 Tickets, of course at £1 per ticket that means that will cost you £13,983,816.

Sorry for boring everyone to death buts thats the figures in case your interested.
 
so the formulae is Sigma E[n= 1 to 6] = [P-n]/[49-n]
Click to expand...

huh???

Or you can just look at the back of the ticket. It tells you what your odds are there :)

800billionmillion:1

You oughta take that math and figure out how to predict the winning numbers Anhar. Geez, I can't even make that formula with my keyboard :)

Jason
 
Not to pee on your parade, but technically speaking I think the conspiracy goes the other way around.

I don't have the math here with me but I can dig it up.... Basically the chance of anyone actually winning the lottery - especially stuff like the powerball lottery - is so slim that on paper there should be very few if any winners. The fact that there are so many winners indicate that the lottery corporations are tampering with the winning numbers to ensure that the game doesn't constantly hit 3 or 4 year ruts.

That being said I would only play a lottery if the money went to a good cause. With chances of winning at something like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% I'd make pretty damn sure that the money I spent went to someone who needed it rather than in the pocket of some greedy bastard.

Another interesting tidbit: You know those people who win say $230 million. Notice how instead of donating say half to charity they always go out and buy Hummers and big-ass houses and end up getting divorced? If I ever won that kind of money I'd probably try to give as much of it as possible away. How the hell is one person or even a family supposed to spend that kind of money anyway. Money never made anyone happy unless it was used for good. And Hummers sure aint good.

mor10
 
vroom!

I would have so much fun with the money. Wouldnt tell anyone and just mess with them all day! I dont trust big charities, id be charitable in my own personal way with individual people. I mean i would have everday for the rest of my life all day to do the charitable stuff my self.
 
Eh, buying a second ticket DOES double your odds over having just one ticket.
In the example of the UK Lottery, 1 ticket = 1:14mil (as anhar so kindly calculated for us :) ) 2 tickets = 2:14mil, or 1:6.5mil, and that is double the odds from the first ticket.
2 tickets is still a very small chance - and as said, you'd have to buy a LOT to have a reasonable chance at winnning - 6.5million tickets for 50/50. - But 2 tickets is double the chances over one ticket.


Of course buying the FIRST ticket is actually the best way to improve your chances. 1:14mil is still a heck (infinatly) of a lot better than 0:14mil! :cheesy:

- Mikko
 
mikkowilson said:
Eh, buying a second ticket DOES double your odds over having just one ticket.
In the example of the UK Lottery, 1 ticket = 1:14mil (as anhar so kindly calculated for us :) ) 2 tickets = 2:14mil, or 1:6.5mil, and that is double the odds from the first ticket.
2 tickets is still a very small chance - and as said, you'd have to buy a LOT to have a reasonable chance at winnning - 6.5million tickets for 50/50. - But 2 tickets is double the chances over one ticket.


Of course buying the FIRST ticket is actually the best way to improve your chances. 1:14mil is still a heck (infinatly) of a lot better than 0:14mil! :cheesy:

- Mikko
Click to expand...
errrr... your math is a bit wonky there Mikko... a lottery is not like a raffle where there are a set number of tickets and one is guaranteed to be the winner. if it were, then your calculations would have been correct. in a normal lottery however your winning depends on you picking the right numbers out of a whole pile of numbers. as such each ticket independently has for instance a 1 in 14,000,000 chance of winning. if you buy two tickets with different numbers each one of them has a 1 in 14,000,000 chance of winning but your chances of winning are not doubled.

the math governing lottery tickets is quite complicated but incredibly easily and well explained on this fun site where you can calculate your chances and see them broken down: http://www.webmath.com/lottery.html

it even gives you explanations of what the likelihood of winning can compare to.

For instance with one ticket you have a 1 in 13,983,816 chance of winning the Canadian 6/49 lottery. in comparison you have a 1 in 2,000,000 chance of being struck by lightning.

[edit: Wikipedia has a good article for the math freaks out there to figure this one out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_mathematics ]

mor10
 
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but the thing with the lottery is, someone eventually wins. Someone actually wins.

So there IS a chance. And what if you are that person who wins? What must that be like? How did you actually do it?

It kind of goes along with that saying, why vote since you're just one of 100 million voters? Your vote isn't going to matter. That would be a good calculation to figure out. What are YOUR CHANCES that YOUR SINGLE VOTE will actually affect who becomes president? 1 in 100 million? Sounds better than the lottery to me. And half of the country votes so...? Are they all stupid?



Oh wait, the lottery is a scam. Never mind.
 
In Florida take a look. It says "Estimated Jackpot" key word "estimated". If you no one played the lottery, it wouldn't be so high. It's your loss for playing and if you won, you'd be one happy mother sucker.
 
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