Tuesday saw me visiting the local supermarket and whilst waiting to buy a newspaper I found myself standing behind a woman who was buying her lottery tickets for the week. Having passed over the little red slips with her numbers, and paid the sixteen pounds required, she waited for the person serving her to get her numbers. As she waited she turned to a friend who was with her and, smiling, told them that she must be lucky one day and it would be good if it was this week as she had so many bills they couldn't pay.
I wanted to tell her that the chance of her winning the jackpot was about one in fourteen million and even the tenner that three numbers brings was about one in fifty-seven, but I didn't think it would make her day. I stood there listening to the conversation and thought about the fact that she had a 44% chance of winning nothing and a 42% chance of the tenner and so the odds were stacked against her.
I once attended a lecture on chance, hope and certainty and during this we stopped at the lottery. The speaker suggested that if we were 'those sort of people who did the lottery' then we'd be better off buying our ticket a couple of hours before the draw as this would give us a chance that we might see some prize money. This got me thinking about the lucky dips and the ways they were constructed. "Was there more chance of a hitherto unissued number being successful, " I mused. Then the speaker burst the train of thought with the words:
"If you are wondering why you have more chance of seeing the lottery money if you buy it within a couple of hours of the draw, it is simply this. Statistically, there's more chance of you dying before Wednesday if you buy it on a Monday or Tuesday or on Thursday or Friday if you buy your Saturday ticket then, than there is of winning. Buy it just before and there's a good chance you will still be 'in it to win it' - and then you only have the odds against winning to contend with!"
I struggle with the issue of lottery funding because time and time again I find myself being confronted by situations where those who are obviously struggling financially increase their struggle in the hope that salvation lies in the shape of six numbers. The lottery isn't done to help good causes, even though so many claim this is their reason for doing it, and regardless of the talk of who'd benefit, the reality is that the person most thought of when putting down the money is the person putting down the money!
I often find myself ministering to people with problems caused by gambling and when I explain that gambling in itself might not be wrong but there are limits and if paying for the privilege of doing whatever it is damages you or your family then that limit has been reached (and exceeded).
I was really glad when the lottery lady left for as she did she was explaining that she had sixteen times the chance of winning! Now 1/14,000,000 = 0.000007142857% and sixteen tickets raises this to 0.000114285714% that's an improvement in your chances of 0.00010707142843 (that an eleven thousandth of a percent!)
Still more chance of being hit by lighting :-(
Pax
6 comments:
When I worked in the temple of Mammon (or the LIFFE floor as some called it) we would buy 400 or so tickets covering all variations of 8 numbers (I think), but only when the jackpot got big enough to make it worth doing. It needs to get considerably over £14m, but at some point it becomes a mathematical possibility worth considering.
Most if not all of the people who bought these tickets didn't do the lottery the rest of the time.
But these people had money already, and were likely to keep it. The lottery preys on the minds of those who wish to get rich quick, and for whom the maths of the thing makes no sense. Because if it did, they would't buy, and that would be the end of that.
Mind you, having said all that, I may have had a few quid on +coventry to be the next ABC.
Useful thinking and a good argument for buying but one ticket rather than many.
Strange blog from a Vicar though?
A good illustration of the futility of spending money in order to win money.
I never gamble, not from any highly ethical standpoint, merely that my early years were spent trying to make 10 shillings do the work of ten pounds, and there was never a penny to spare for games of chance.
My parents instilled in us the sheer stupidity of 'throwing away' hard-earned cash in order to stand a million to one chance of winning some.
Like you, I am constantly amazed that those who claim to be the 'worst off'. seem to spend the most money on "no-hope" speculation.
I suspect that many who gamble on the lottery are doing it for wishful thinking.
Some are doing it to ensure that at least some of their money will go to a good cause, but they are misinformed. Good causes include any project that the Government thinks needs funds, but can't afford to pay for itself from public funds.
The charitable ethos of those who govern how lottery money is spent, as many good causes get ignored, while spurious ones benefit. I wonder if the Olympic Games or the poor or derived should have benefited from the millions of Lottery money devoted to it.
The health lottery recently started, seems a much more sensible and transparent scheme. Similar in cost and organisation, but the outcomes and funding decisions are published weekly. So, you can see where your money is going.
And of course, the chances of winning are a bit higher than the national lottery, due to the low numbers playing.
Around 15 years ago I worked in an office where a number of my colleagues. intelligent IT professionals all, would buy lottery tickets. Sometimes they did this on the way out to a mid-week staff meal. One of them went on record describing the purshase of a ticket as a "tax on stupidity." It didn't stop him buying one though.
I think there is also a deeper aspect.
If you're working in a minimum wage job, raising a child, struggling to make ends meet. You've seen your child benefit cut, your local library has closed, the price of utilities is going up, along with food, and petrol. You feel probably in 10 years time you are probably not going to be much better off...
So at the end of the week, once you have put food on the table and paid the bills and rent, you have a couple of quid left over and you put it on the lottery, because hey, you might get lucky. And even if you don't win the millions, you might win the £100,000 prize, which is a life changing amount. Or even the prize of £1,500 will allow for maybe a long-overdue new washing machine, and a holiday which otherwise would be impossible.
From a purely mathematical point of view, playing the lottery is futile. But life is not purely mathematical.
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