Well please refer to my "what should I do on my birthday?" thread to input that advice.
Oh wait, there is no such thread.
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Another scratch ticket thread, for math geeks!
- Thread starter StephenCampbell
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Well please refer to my "what should I do on my birthday?" thread to input that advice.
Oh wait, there is no such thread.
Show of hands - anybody think OP is really going to buy all those tickets for his birthday and then stop?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
OP, think of how early you would pay off those loans if you never bought scratch tickets.
The long-term-affordable number I settled on is $60 a month for scratch.. so aside from my birthday, that's all I'll be spending.
And I'll probably tire of it within the next year anyway and then not even spend that.
It is kind of like people that smoke, and smoke a lot. If they sat down and figured out how much they spend trying to kill themselves they would have quite a bit more money to put towards other things.
I don't mean to sounds like a dick OP. But if you sit down and figure out how much you have spent on scratch offs so far this year and then think of the stuff you could have bought with that money. Or better yet put it towards something like those student loans. All my extra money goes towards my house, whether it be in the form of an extra mortgage payment so my 20 year loan in not 20 years or towards fixing it up and doing things to it that I find are needed.
The point is I am not spending that money on scratch off tickets that gain me nothing in the long run. The system is rigged, find something better to spend your money on that gives you that same "warm and fuzzy" feeling.
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That $60 per month is an extra mortgage payment on a house each year, or if you are renting could be put towards that... or save it up for 2 years and buy yourself a new MacBook Air
That's true, maybe I'll reduce my long term regular playing to $35 a month. One day each month I'll get a $20, $10 and $5 ticket, and I'll have the liberty of spending any minor winnings on additional tickets.
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Oh, by the gods I am pretty sure I don't quite believe in….behold the voice of reason…..behold the voice of reason…...
So if the odds of event 1 are 1:12, the odds of event 2 are 1:18 and the odds of event 3 are 1:277, what are the odds of any one of the three events happening?
Nah, he's off on another caffeine rush and there'll be no holding him back.
KGB
Need more info. Are the three events mutually exclusive, or partially exclusive? Can each event happen more than once? Independent of the others?
The way you worded (or failed to word) this question speaks volumes about your misunderstanding of probabilities.
The simplest answer would be for independent non-mutually exclusive events, given one "roll of the dice," as they say. Given one opportunity, the chance that at least one event would occur would be (1/12)+(1/18)+(1/277), I would think.
It's still not even that simple, because that's not the question that was posed. That's why I asked.
You're trying to boil this hypothetical scenario to a "roll of the dice." The question, as posed, can't be applied to that type of probability.
In a "roll of the dice," for example, let's say there's a single die, and it's weighted. In this case, event 1 happens 1 time in 12, event 2 happens one time in 18, and event 3 happens 1 time in 277. Yes, in that particular case, the probability of either event 1, event 2, or event 3 occurring on a single roll is indeed (1/12)+(1/18)+(1/277).
But you've overlooked one very significant reality in that scenario: when rolling a single die, as in your example, if the result is that event 1 occurs, then necessarily, event 2 does not occur and event 3 does not occur. In this case, yes, it's as simple as adding the three probabilities together.
That's not the question that was posed, and that's why I said there's not enough information given. That's why I asked whether any of the events were exclusive. If there's a chance that event 1 AND event 2 can occur, then the math is no longer as simple as adding the three probabilities; the same is true if event 2 and event 3 can occur simultaneously, or if all three can occur simultaneously.
[doublepost=1515677300][/doublepost]I KNOW what his goal is cause it's the same as mine.which combination of tickets would give you the best chance of winning the most money.thats all.
This is a perfect example of why the tickets are a bad idea at all, you simply do not grasp the basic concepts and if you did, you wouldn't even think of buying a single ticket. If a $5 ticket has a 1 in 3.76 chance of winning, 4 tickets have a 71% chance of winning something at all. I'm not sure where you get your 106% figure from. Nothing can happen with a greater than 100% probability by definition. And clearly you can buy 4 or even 400 tickets and win nothing, so the odds must be less then 100% for 4 tickets.
You are also looking at the wrong thing entirely. Don't forget that when you win a prize it can easily be less than you spent on tickets, so did you really win? If you buy 4 $5 tickets and win a single $10 prize, you technically are among the 71% of "winners" and yet the reality is you lost. So even though you have a 71% chance to "win", your odds of coming out ahead are much lower than that.
I can create a lottery that will give you a 100% chance to win very easily and yet you'd be a fool to play it. Pay me $2 and pick a number between 1 and 10. If you're right, you win $10. Now you can guarantee a "win" by buying 10 tickets and choosing all the numbers from 1 to 10. You will "win" 100% of the time. Yet every time you play you spend $20 on tickets and get back a $10 prize. So even though you win 100% of the time, you're out $10 every time you play.
The only thing to look at is expected return. This is the sum of all possible prizes weighted against the probability of winning that prize. And virtually all US lotteries have a 40-45% expected returning meaning for every $1 you play in the lottery you will get back 40-45 cents. And every singly time you play, you are hit with that ratio. So when you take your "winnings" and play a second time you've got 15-20% left. Your money will go to zero very fast and that is the only part of playing scratch tickets that you can be confident of.
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The answer is no tickets. Then your expected return is 100%. The problem is that he and you don't want to hear this.
If you insist on buying tickets at all then the answer is buy as few tickets as possible because you're losing money every time you buy a ticket. You don't want to hear that either.