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What are the odds?
By adamg on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:25am
Whatever they are, they're about to get a lot worse as the Lottery tries to increase revenue from Megabucks. Lottery players will no doubt keep that in mind when Treasurer Tim runs for governor next year.
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Comments
Wow
If players are really that upset about being less likely to win, they probably should have checked the odds to win to begin with.
Did you read the article?
Did you read the article?
Smaller jackpots for the win
I'd think that a larger number of smaller jackpots would help.
The utility to me of $2 million is *less than* twice that of $1 million.
A chance of a $5 million jackpot is a much better deal than a 100 (or even 50) times less likely $500 million jackpot.
Surely they could find a way to sell the fantasy to people. Buy a nice house, send your (grand)kids to college, retire and travel.
But you are economically rational
... and lottery dreamers are not, which is why lotteries work at all.
Consider all the people who refuse to buy a ticket until the mega zillions jackpot has reached some ridiculous threshold amount, saying that it's just "not worth it" to "play" for less.
People are quite bad at evaluating probabilities and I think it's even worse when there are multiple orders of scale at play in the same decision. Of (cost of entering, odds of winning, magnitude of the prize), only the cost of entering and the odds of winning really matter, but people use the odds and size of the prize when deciding what games to play.
oh, and the addiction thing. addictions are most readily developed through random reinforcement. If the state really wanted to get people hooked, it would give away lots of prizes. Not enough to cut into the earnings, but enough so that just about every player, is, or knows, someone who won a prize recently.
You give me too much credit
Were I economically rational, I would not have turned down all those *dotcom* lottery tickets in favor of staying in grad school poverty. :)
And I left dot-com as the peak was approaching
... to attend grad school, which taught me that I should not have done that, thereby making it worth the cost and trouble of attending. Oh, I think my head may explode whilst calculating that.
btw if anyone from Wilson-Sonsini is reading, i'm available now to take advantage of your equity in lieu of cash payment for services arrangement.
hello?
anyone?