UPDATE (April 1, 2012): Well, it looks like I saved $12!  My odds of winning were  about 1 in 170,000,000  for each number I picked. Well, a little worse since I didn’t actually have a ticket. I really wanted to delve into some of the lottery math, mechanics and philosophy but I just don’t have the energy or time these days. Anyway, I’m going to take my savings (or is that winnings!) and invest in a meal (bad bad long term ROI, by the way)!

I have a “real” blog post coming soon. But I thought I’d post something quick & fun.

If you’re alive then you probably know about the $640 million dollar jackpot from Mega Millions. I’m not going to go into any details about how you play, odds, or anything like that right now. I’m simply going to announce that I will never buy a lotto ticket. It’s a sucker’s bet. That being said, you can’t help but feel some of the excitement in the air about the drawing tonight. It’s interesting enough that I thought I’d pretend to play. Here are my Mega Millions selections assuming I had played twelve times:

3-10-41-27-15 & 7
28-38-11-3-7 & 36
12-34-1-2-3 & 4
1-2-3-4-12 & 34
9-10-38-47-37 & 33
7-9-23-54-49 & 40
22-18-3-20-21 & 6
10-19-27-32-48 & 7
1-15-38-46-52 & 18
10-24-28-40-52 & 35
3-14-29-30-51 & 16
17-18-34-38-53 & 21

After the drawing tonight we’ll see if I’m $12 richer or out hundreds of millions. Sure-  it would be upsetting to be the guy who picked the winning numbers and then didn’t buy a ticket but I doubt that will be the case.

After the drawing I’ll update this post and I may elaborate more on the game, explain some of the math behind the odds, share some insights explaining why some numbers really are better than other numbers (some of my picks are not actually good choices) and discuss the pros versus cons about luck based games like these.

Posted by Cam, March 30, 2012, 5:55pm