Thursday, April 10, 2008

Chances Are Slim That I Will Win the Lottery


I will occasionally pick up a lottery ticket if the jackpot is huge. Apparently, if you are one of those people who buy lottery tickets regularly you are throwing money out the window. I was listening to NPR recently and they were interviewing a professor that wrote a book called "Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin". The guy, Lauwrence Weinstein, put it all into perspective with regards to lottery tickets for me. You know when it says on the ticket "Your chances of winning are 1 in 12, 048, 2837?" What does that number mean? Professor Weinstein put it into layman's term for the rest of us. He said to imagine taking enough lottery tickets to stack them one on top of another all the way from the ground to where the planes fly, so about 40,000 feet up, and then your job is to pull one ticket, only one ticket and one try to do this, you must pull the winning lottery ticket.


Puts things into perspective for me. Chances are slim that I will win the lottery.
[Jerry posted a comment that got me thinking so I wanted to add something to this post on imagery. I love solid imagery to help me wrap my brain around things. You might like the book I referred to in my post. He even talks about the numbers 1 in one billion. If you line the equator with white golf balls and your job would be to pick out the one red golf ball that would be equal to 1/1 billionth. If you line the equator with grains of white sand and then try to pick out the red grain of sand this would equal 1/1 trillionth. Amazing isn't it? Thank you for your comment!)

2 comments:

Jerry said...

Wow, I love that analogy! It really leads to a solid visualization that the chances of winning the lottery are not just slim, they are infinitesimal... people often seem to behave as if they have some sort of sick insurance policy that they will win if they play long enough.
Jerry
www.leads4insurance.com

ChouChou said...

Thanks! I love solid imagery to help me wrap my brain around things. You might like the book I referred to in my post. He even talks about the numbers 1 in one billion. If you line the equator with white golf balls and your job would be to pick out the one red golf ball that would be equal to 1/1 billionth. If you line the equator with grains of white sand and then try to pick out the red grain of sand this would equal 1/1 trillionth. Amazing isn't it? Thank you for your comment!