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Old 3rd March 2012, 01:03 PM   #7
ynot
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Join Date: Jan 2006
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Originally Posted by Dan O. View Post
People with no money are willing forced to work all day to earn a minimum wage of about $50.
FTFY

I fail to see what this debate has to do with the value of money. I don’t think anyone is seriously debating that Lotto is ever a good investment regardless of how it‘s played. That some people play Lotto with disposable income and others play with food and rent money is a different issue.

The significant difference between having 38,383,800 attempts in 1 draw and 1 attempt in 38,383,800 different draws is that the former is an absolutely guaranteed result and the latter isn’t. The significant difference between having 0 attempt compared to having 1 attempt is the difference between impossible (0 in 38,383,800) and possible (1 in 38,383,800).

Math “predicts” that a coin toss is 50/50 heads or tails but this doesn’t mean that the actual results of coin tosses will be evenly distributed in practice. It’s more “likely” than not in practice that any series of coin tosses will not be exactly evenly distributed.

Regardless of how many attempts you have in the same draw the odds of any individual attempt winning are 1 in 38,383,800. Having multiple attempts only makes it more likely that one of those attempts will be the winning one. If you have 38,383,800 attempts in the same draw the likelihood that one of those attempts will be the winning one is 100% guaranteed. Having 10 attempts at 1 in 38,383,800 in the same draw doesn’t make it significantly more likely that you have the winning attempt than if you only had 1 attempt. Having 10 attempts still leaves 38,383,790 attempts you don’t have.
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Last edited by ynot; 3rd March 2012 at 01:10 PM.
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