$tellafane

Tom Rankin wrote in
:

I'm very good at math, and I play the lottery. Here's how I
rationalize it:

If you play the lottery 0 times, you can expect to win - 0 dollars.

If you play the lottery more than 0 times, you can expect to win -
more than 0 dollars.

If you can afford to look at it as entertainment, (which I can), this
philosophy works. If not, well, then maybe it is a tax on dumb
people...

Sorry. It's still a tax on dumb people. You would have MUCH better odds
of winning $0 in any casino in the world. So even if you want (and can
afford) to entertain yourself by throwing your money away, the lottery is
the dumbest place to throw it.

Tom Rankin:
I'm very good at math, and I play the lottery. Here's how I rationalize it:

You only needed to say "I rationalize it." That's justification enough.

If you play the lottery 0 times, you can expect to win - 0 dollars.

OK.

If you play the lottery more than 0 times, you can expect to win - more
than 0 dollars.

Oops! I won't say that this is strictly untrue, but you are quite
unlikely to win more than you spend on lottery tickets, and extremely
unlikely to win a big prize. There used to be a web site that asked a
couple of questions about your state lottery, and then calculated how
often you could expect to hit the big jackpot if you played every time.
In my state, Maryland, I could expect to win big every 17,000 years.
That didn't mean that I was guaranteed to win every 17,000 years, but
that the odds were pretty good. The Md. lottery has changed since then,
but not for the better, I'm sure.

If you can afford to look at it as entertainment, (which I can), this
philosophy works. If not, well, then maybe it is a tax on dumb people...

I see mainly the poor and ignorant buying lottery tickets; I have no
way of knowing whether they are intelligent or not, only that they are
ignorant. So I prefer to think of the lottery as a tax on those who
slept through arithmetic class. I feel a bit guilty that they are
paying my taxes for me, and I have lobbied the state legislature to get
rid of the lottery. That's a fool's errand, however; the state
governments that have lotteries are addicted to the easy money that
they rake in and they know who it is coming from, but pretend that it
is OK.

I, too, can afford lottery tickets, and I bought a MegaMillions ticket
two or three years ago, but I didn't win. That was most discouraging.

But I have also said "If you gamble for money, you can't win, but if
you gamble for fun, you can't lose."

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Davoud wrote:
I see mainly the poor and ignorant buying lottery tickets; I have no
way of knowing whether they are intelligent or not, only that they are
ignorant. So I prefer to think of the lottery as a tax on those who
slept through arithmetic class.

Alas, it is not in arithmetic (as I'm sure you knew). It is a problem
in probability, statistics, and expectations, which many people have the
misfortune to (a) have an intuition about, and (b) have that intuition be
utterly wrong, in the case of low-probability events.

The mathematics education system in many states expects you to pick this
stuff up just along the way. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

Davoud wrote:
I see mainly the poor and ignorant buying lottery tickets; I have no
way of knowing whether they are intelligent or not, only that they are
ignorant. So I prefer to think of the lottery as a tax on those who
slept through arithmetic class.

Brian Tung:
Alas, it is not in arithmetic (as I'm sure you knew). It is a problem
in probability, statistics, and expectations, which many people have the
misfortune to (a) have an intuition about, and (b) have that intuition be
utterly wrong, in the case of low-probability events.

I used "arithmetic," as I am wont to do, in the sense of "mathematics."
The two may not be synonymous, but I think that the idea gets through.

In any case, as I think about it, anecdotal evidence is that I was
wrong about the lottery being a tax on people who slept through
"arithmetic" class. The truth is that lots of people who understand the
probability of winning a lottery -- or at least understand that the
probability is very low -- buy the tickets anyway. It seems that the
opportunity to get something for nothing is just too powerful a force
for the human psyche to resist. This is part of what the OP referred to
as the entertainment value; we all like suspense, as well.

The mathematics education system in many states expects you to pick this
stuff up just along the way. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

I happen to be quite inept at abstract mathematics, though I get along
well enough when I need to apply mathematics to the problem at hand.
And it really was in elementary school arithmetic class that I was
first exposed to probability and chance, though it of course wasn't
called that. Seems we had a nice lady for an arithmetic teacher and she
was a sports fan (but not a bettor, I believe), and it was in that
context that she taught us about odds and such like. We even built a
little coin-flipping machine and demonstrated to our satisfaction that
heads and tails were equally likely results in the long run. The most
important thing that she taught us was that people who own gambling
casinos are far more likely to be wealthy than the people who patronize
them. As far as I'm concerned, that's all one really needs to know
about gambling -- no math required!

Davoud

P.S. As those who have been in Nevada and other gambling states know,
some casinos offer pretty good food -- sometimes great food -- at low
prices. Whiskey Pete's on the Nevada-California border comes to mind;
they have a great breakfast buffet. Anyway, many years ago while I was
visiting a friend in Nevada we went to a casino for breakfast because I
was a poor Airman and he was a poor college student. The breakfast bill
had a number on it that could win a prize with the periodic spinning of
a wheel. I won $300.00, which was nearly two months' pay, for the cost
of a top-notch $.69 breakfast.

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Davoud wrote:
I used "arithmetic," as I am wont to do, in the sense of "mathematics."
The two may not be synonymous, but I think that the idea gets through.

OK. I appreciate that to you, they may be synonymous, but they surely
are not to me, and in my case, the idea didn't get through. (I mean, I
suspected you knew that it was a problem in probability, but I really
didn't know what you meant by what you said.)

Arithmetic is plus, minus, times, divide, etc. Mathematics is, of course,
the whole shebang.

Anyway, now I know what you mean.

As far as I'm concerned, that's all one really needs to know
about gambling -- no math required!

I agree that it's all one needs to know about gambling. I don't think
that it's all one needs to know about probability, though. (I don't
mean to be a party-pooper, but ignorance of probability is one of my
pet peeves.)

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

Davoud wrote in :

P.S. As those who have been in Nevada and other gambling states know,
some casinos offer pretty good food -- sometimes great food -- at low
prices. Whiskey Pete's on the Nevada-California border comes to mind;
they have a great breakfast buffet. Anyway, many years ago while I was
visiting a friend in Nevada we went to a casino for breakfast because
I was a poor Airman and he was a poor college student. The breakfast
bill had a number on it that could win a prize with the periodic
spinning of a wheel. I won $300.00, which was nearly two months' pay,
for the cost of a top-notch $.69 breakfast.

Which is $300 more than you will ever win buying lottery tickets. g
Casinos have much better odds than the lottery. In most cases, many
thousands (if not millions) of times better if my math (not arithmetic) is
correct. Note: the odds are still not "good," just better.

"Davoud" wrote in message
...
[SNIP]
In any case, as I think about it, anecdotal evidence is that I was
wrong about the lottery being a tax on people who slept through
"arithmetic" class. The truth is that lots of people who understand the
probability of winning a lottery -- or at least understand that the
probability is very low -- buy the tickets anyway. It seems that the
opportunity to get something for nothing is just too powerful a force
for the human psyche to resist. This is part of what the OP referred to
as the entertainment value; we all like suspense, as well.
[SNIP]

Davoud,

A group of about 20 people I used to work with bought lottery tickets
together for several years. The guy running it kept track of the amount
spent on tickets and our winnings. After figuring we spent some $5,000 or
so, and won a couple hundred, we disbanded it.

A far more reasonable approach would have been to put a little money aside
each week, and then treated ourselves one heck of a party after a couple of
years, or perhaps rented a bus for a nice day trip somewhere interesting.

I can relate to your story about the "breakfast win," although in a much
more modest way. When I was in the army I had to go north to Seoul from
Pusan, including a stay in Seoul overnight. The army had a place for me to
stay and provided meals,. I was in the mood for somewhat better dinner
fare, but only had a grand total of 35 cents in my pockets. I went to the
NCO club, used my useless sum in a nickel slot machine, and won enough for a
pizza and beverages.

Clear skies, Alan

Brian Tung:
...(I don't mean to be a party-pooper, but ignorance of probability is one of my
pet peeves.)

We all have our idiosyncratic pet peeves; ignorance of probability is
about as esoteric a one as I have encountered!

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Sorry. It's still a tax on dumb people. You would have MUCH better odds
of winning $0 in any casino in the world. So even if you want (and can
afford) to entertain yourself by throwing your money away, the lottery is
the dumbest place to throw it.



I think you're all being a bit harsh in grouping _everyone_ who plays the
lottery together. Yes, the odds are vastly against you, more so than in any
other form of gambling, but is someone an idiot if they buy, say a ticket or
two a month just to have the chance and the entertainment value of knowing they
have that chance, even knowing the odds are very (very, very, very) much
against them? The idiots are those who buy 20 tickets (or more, when the
jackpots go up) a week thinking they're greatly improving their chances. And,
think of it, if people just made decisions based on the real odds of success
who would ever, say, thinking astronomically, hunt for comets? or write
novels? Granted, the odds are better, I've no doubt, for those than for the
lottery, but they're still mighty long odds. There's a certain pleasure in
even the attempt, and knowing there's a chance, however slim, of success. You
can't discount that aspect of it.

Davoud wrote:
We all have our idiosyncratic pet peeves; ignorance of probability is
about as esoteric a one as I have encountered!

Perhaps. But one with more tangible repercussions than most pet peeves.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt