You are over complicating your logic and ignoring basic mathematical principles.
Lottery Odds
- Thread starter Skull
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You are over complicating your logic and ignoring basic mathematical principles.
All of those were in response to krotoon and then reaper talking about halving the chances of losing. Where I don't believe that any of the previous discussion had been about 'chances of losing', hence why I said 'no-one thinks that'. No-one in the thread, had said they thought that to that point.
I stand that it would be 'absurd' to think that buying a second ticket would halve your chances of losing.
But I have acknowledged that Krotoon did a good job in explaining why some people might (wrongly) think changing from 1 in 14 million, to 1 in 7 million would halve their chances of losing. Ie, they think they have 1 chance of winning and 14 million chances of losing. Or, 1 chance of winning and then only 7 million chances of losing.
However, I still don't think that anyone who plays the lottery does actually thing that buying a second ticket halves your chances of losing.
You're right, it would be.
This is exactly what I was getting at, so it looks like we've been arguing at cross purposes the whole time.
But they might if you told them that the second ticket would double their odds from 1 in 14m to 1 in 7m if they don't understand the numbers.
I agree, but I do believe that the average person would believe that 1 in 7mill odds is significantly better than 1 in 14mill, which is what I am getting at.
I'm sure there is a term for how the human brain cannot comprehend the unlikelihood of odds once they get to a certain size.
This snippet explains my angle a bit better:
I'm reminded of an old thread seeing some of the replies in here.
At the first of starting that argument up again, here it is: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17825376
At the time I remember getting very frustrated by some people just not getting why the answer is what it is, even when explained in minute detail.
At the first of starting that argument up again, here it is: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17825376
At the time I remember getting very frustrated by some people just not getting why the answer is what it is, even when explained in minute detail.
The answer is both 9 + 1, as it's ambiguous.
No arguing over this please... we had a 50 page thread -.-
Given that basically no one has done the relevant statistics work to prove it one way or another, I don't think it's really fair to compare it to a deliberately ambiguous troll question.
I just checked some lottery threads on the internet, trust me when I say this thread is tame in comparison. Long story short, it isn't as simple as you think.
Apparently it boils down to probablity and odds, which are 2 different things, hence why there's so much confusion everywhere.
If you buy 2 tickets your probability of winning is 2/14m or 1/7m.
If you buy 2 tickets your odds of winning are 2:14m which you cannot state as 1:7m
Truthfully I gave up after that, I still don't fully understand it.
Associate
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wow just read that thread. Must have been like banging your head against a brick wall. Also, I just noticed that it was posted exactly the same time of year - 4 years ago. I wonder what the chances of that are!
Soldato
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Hands up those who are so confused they are going to drop £200 on Lottery tickets this weekend in the false understanding that they are guaranteed to win the jackpot?
o/
o/
All I remember is it was down to permutations and combinations, so the way of working out the odds of a chosen set of numbers goes up each time you have to pick another one (so it gets harder to go for more right) but it's not stupidly hard as you don't have to order them from your guess (but still really improbable to guess)
I guess a link and run will settle the matter
http://playlotto.org.uk/lottery/uklottery_odds.html
Associate
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That is 200/14,000,000 chance of winning - or 1/70000
Although I have found my self beginning to doubt my self after reading these threads
9 and 1 are technically both valid answers. If you stick rigidly to kiddie maths, you'll come out with 9 - if you incorporate a little further comprehension, you could easily resolve the answer to 1. In reality it's a flawed and intentionally ambiguous formula because the ÷ sign isn't ever really used after primary school - you'd use / instead. Clarification is necessary as to whether the (6/2) is a single expression by itself or whether it should be expressed as 6/(2(1+2)). There's a whole rage thread around here somewhere with a majority citing primary school maths rules that 'prove' it's 9, a minority claiming primary school maths is no longer valid and resolving the equation to equal 1 and a very small proportion (who are right) who can recognise the ambiguity of the expression and, while leaning one way or the other or staying strictly ambiguous, recognise that either answer could be mathematically valid depending on how the expression was rewritten.
Edit: As to the thread at hand, it would seem obvious to me that buying a second ticket would double your chance of winning - odds of 14,000,000:1 which can also be expressed as a fraction 1/14,000,000 when multiplied by two gives a fraction of 2/14,000,000 (exactly equivalent to 1/7,000,000) or an odds ratio of 14,000,000:2. Any gambling shop in the world would reduce the latter to the simplest expression, i.e. 7,000,000:1. That being said, if somebody with a much more sound understanding of statistics than my own meagre recollection were to insist that this wouldn't be classified as "doubling chances of success" I would be open to an explanation as to exactly why not.
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