Euromillions

[vorsprung]

The Euromillions jackpot is £113 million sterling this week.  Or that might be the overall amount of prize money.

Anyway, the cost to enter is 2 quid and the odds of the big prize are 1 in 76,275,360.   So as far as I can see it is not worth entering until the jackpot reaches £153 million based on the theory of expected returns

1 in 76,275,360 is pretty unlikely isn't it?  Why do people do it?

[Charlotte]

It's a tax on the mathematically challenged.

[Riggers]

You cynical bunch. I'm going to enter (if I can remember to) AND I'm going to win!!

[Pancho]

I thought it was a quid.

Looks like it'll be an inflationary recession then.

[pcolbeck]

Because it is a small wager with a large potential payout. If you do it expecting to win or even to get a reasonable return then you are deluded. If you see it as probably throwing away £2 but with a very very slight chance of a winning enough money to change your life that's a different thing entirely.
People do win and that's the point. £2 isn't a huge sum and investing it in anything else isn't going to generate much return either.
The sad thing is if people get convinced that they will win and start buying loads of tickets when they can't afford it.
I do the lottery occasionally, will probably do it on Friday. I don't plan my life around the idea I might win though (well except occasionally when bored on long motorway journeys) since as you say it is somewhat unlikely.

[MSeries]

1 in 76,275,360 is pretty unlikely isn't it?  Why do people do it?

Yes it's unlikely. But someone might win; and people do.

[Riggers]

It's a quid for the normal lottery (I think), and used to be £1.50 for the Euro lottery, but has obviously gone up in price since I last 'had a go'.

[pcolbeck]

I thought it was a quid.

Looks like it'll be an inflationary recession then.

UK lottery is £1, Euro lottery is more. Was £1,50 last time I did it but may have gone up.

[MSeries]

Because it is a small wager with a large potential payout. If you do it expecting to win or even to get a reasonable return then you are deluded. If you see it as probably throwing away £2 but with a very very slight chance of a winning enough money to change your life that's a different thing entirely.
People do win and that's the point. £2 isn't a huge sum and investing it in anything else isn't going to generate much return either.
The sad thing is if people get convinced that they will win and start buying loads of tickets when they can't afford it.
I do the lottery occasionally, will probably do it on Friday. I don't plan my life around the idea I might win though (well except occasionally when bored on long motorway journeys) since as you say it is somewhat unlikely.

I did the lotto last weekend as a reaction to my probable redundancy, I had £2 in two on line accounts. I won £10, made me feel better about the bad news I had on Friday.

Euro Milliions is £2, get over it

[JT]

Everyone in our department apart from the director is in a newly formed syndicate.

[Regulator]

I thought it was a quid.

Looks like it'll be an inflationary recession then.

UK lottery is £1, Euro lottery is more. Was £1,50 last time I did it but may have gone up.

€uromillions went up by 50p to £2.00 just before Christmas (I think).  The extra 50p (it was £1.50 before) now gives you entry into a UK only guaranteed £1million draw.  Your €uromillions ticket gets an extra 'code number' on it which is your entry into the additional draw.

[red marley]

1 in 76,275,360 is pretty unlikely isn't it?  Why do people do it?

Yes it's unlikely. But someone might win; and people do.

Lottery / probability rant alert...

I think that is a misunderstanding of the probabilities involved here. For a single person buying a single ticket with those odds, the likelihood of winning is 0, nada, zilch, rien, impossible.

OK, the probability of hitting the jackpot is actually 0.000000013. But since when do we normally concern ourselves with such precision when assessing likelihoods in our every day lives? The difference between that number and 0 is so small it is not worth considering. Anyone who can hold in their head the idea of "impossible" is so much closer to the true likelihood of hitting the jackpot than any notion "it's a very small chance, but it might just be me".

The lottery works because it encourages us to confuse "quite small" [chance of winning] with "absolutely tiny beyond almost anything we are capable of conceiving".

[robbo6]

It went up because the euro/pound exchange rate has changed so much.

[TheLurker]

It's a tax on the mathematically challenged.

More of a tax on desperation I think.

Me? Oh yes I'm 'desperate' and I'll be wasting a couple of quid.  After all it's only equates to a little over half a pint of beer or 3 or 4 bars of chocolate which is what I'd probably spend it on if I didn't buy a ticket.

The lottery works because it encourages us to confuse "quite small" [chance of winning] with "absolutely tiny beyond almost anything we are capable of conceiving".

Nah, I think pretty much everybody knows that their chance of winning is nigh on zero, but, importantly, it isn't quite zero.

[DuncanM]

I'll be in the syndicate here.  It might be a tax on stupidity, but I'm feeling stupid.  I just won't buy a pastie for lunch tomorrow.

[red marley]

I don't get the "it's only a couple of quid" argument.

I'd understand it more if people said the same when throwing two pound coins into the sea (the probability of a return on either activity is exactly the same: 0.00000 to 5dp).

[Pancho]

People chuck coins into fountains, don't they?

Looks like the justification, "for luck" seems about right in both cases.

[nicknack]

I think that is a misunderstanding of the probabilities involved here. For a single person buying a single ticket with those odds, the likelihood of winning is 0, nada, zilch, rien, impossible.

OK, the probability of hitting the jackpot is actually 0.000000013. But since when do we normally concern ourselves with such precision when assessing likelihoods in our every day lives? The difference between that number and 0 is so small it is not worth considering. Anyone who can hold in their head the idea of "impossible" is so much closer to the true likelihood of hitting the jackpot than any notion "it's a very small chance, but it might just be me".

On the other hand, the odds for winning if you buy 1 ticket are infinitely greater than if you buy no ticket.

[TheLurker]

I don't get the "it's only a couple of quid" argument.

I'd understand it more if people said the same when throwing two pound coins into the sea (the probability of a return on either activity is exactly the same: 0.00000 to 5dp).

Because for many, if not most, of us it's a "fun" activity and it's money that would be blown having "fun" one way or another with little or no expectation of return.

[Sir Tifiable]

And if you don't win, think of it as a contribution to charity - sports or otherwise.

[Tigerrr]

We live in a universe of infinite improbability in which anything that is possible is happening an infinite number of times. On that basis one would be mad not to buy a ticket.  across the universe there are an infinite number of lottery winners!

[vorsprung]

We live in a universe of infinite improbability in which anything that is possible is happening an infinite number of times. On that basis one would be mad not to buy a ticket.  across the universe there are an infinite number of lottery winners!

I used to say if you add the probability of finding a ticket in the street to the odds of winning these lotteries it doesn't actually make it that much less likely in real terms
So there is no need to buy a ticket

However, there have been several recent cases where people have tried to claim a lottery prize with a ticket that they themselves didn't buy and they were charged with "fraud"

[red marley]

We live in a universe of infinite improbability in which anything that is possible is happening an infinite number of times. On that basis one would be mad not to buy a ticket.  across the universe there are an infinite number of lottery winners!

And in that same multiverse, there are an infinite number of people who have been mistakenly given the jackpot without buying any ticket at all.

[robbo6]

However, there have been several recent cases where people have tried to claim a lottery prize with a ticket that they themselves didn't buy and they were charged with "fraud"

I did find a ticket in the street once, I was able to catch up with the dropper and return it, but not before scribbling down the numbers "just in case".

[Pancho]

"Just in case" what? Just in case he won and you could feel, er, righteous at having picked up and returned £1m?

Reminds me of suicide lottery: you write down your numbers and then watch the results - but without buying a ticked.