Permutations vs. Combinations. They're two distinct things in mathematics. Your formula calculates the number of permutations (where order matters... ie, 5,4,3,2,1 is different than 1,2,3,4,5), assuming no replacement. Odds of winning the lotto are based on number of distinct combinations.
My apologies for my incompetence this morning. I've sobered up. If you were the only jackpot winner of $636 Million and won the various other categories, here's how it breaks out: Absolute earnings available: $681,408,322.46 Absolute earnings post-lump-sum: $386,408,322.46 Absolute earnings post-taxes (46%): $177,747,828.33 Ticket Purchases: $258,890,850 Return: ($81,143,021.67) Of interesting note, even if you were the only jackpot winner of $1 Billion, here's how it'd break out: Absolute earnings available: $1,045,408,322.46 Absolute earnings post-lump-sum: $581,571,844.46 Absolute earnings post-taxes (46%): $258,890,850.00 Ticket Purchases: $258,890,850 Return: $8,632,198.45 DO NOT BUY ALL THE COMBINATIONS! I REPEAT, DO NOT BUY! Here's the Excel document I created if you'd like to play around with it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kabsqis1dj9d084/Lottery.xlsx
The way the odds are calculated btw: (75! / 70!) * (1/5!) * 15 = [(75*74*73*72*71) / (5*4*3*2*1)] * 15 = (2071126800 / 120) * 15 = 258890850 Also, for the returns gatsby listed, you would have to incorporate a calculation of possibly sharing the pot. Off the top of my head, they say something like 65% of proceeds go to education/charities and running the lottery. So if the pot increased by 150M since last drawing, 150M * (100/35) = 430M tickets purchased since last drawing. You'd have to assume some stuff like random numbers. The chance that all other tickets do not win the jackpot... (1-(1/258890850))^(430M) surprisingly PC calculators can handle = 19%. Which then you'd have to do something like multiply the inverse to the expected earnings to know the ACTUAL earnings needed to make it worthwhile. Needless to say, that means the jackpot would have to be well into the billions for an expected 1:1 return. The mega millions system is a ploy to inflate the jackpot to huge levels. Smaller lotteries have much better payoff for your dollar (and sufficiently sized pots to let you not worry about money after winning).
Wouldn't the tax rate be 43.4%? Still a loss currently, but not at a billion, IF you were the only winner.
Speaking of lottery ticket. This was back in April. One of the non winning number got shifted by 2 digits. I also came close to win 35 millions at one point where the number also got shifted. Hopefully there is a such thing as 3rd times a charm. I spend about 20 dollars a week buying lottery tickets. Better than buying cigarettes
It would depend on your tax brackets and location (state, local taxes). For example, I'm in NYC and I'd likely be over 50% if I won.
Someone did it 20 years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/u...ge-bets-in-lottery.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm In Virginia this month, one investment group came tantalizingly close to cornering the market on all possible combinations of six numbers from 1 to 44. State lottery officials say that the group bought tickets for 5 million of a possible 7 million combinations, at $1 each, in a lottery with a $27 million jackpot. Only a lack of time prevented the group from buying tickets for the remaining 2 million combinations. While no one has come forward with the one winning ticket in the Feb. 15 lottery, several clues point to the investment group, an Australian syndicate, as the winner.
My whole office (15 people) did a pool on tonights lottery. We bought 60 tickets total. Someone will win something, hopefully. And we are splitting whatever it is.
I've been emailing with one a Forbes contributor about how you could theoretically do this. Here were his comments: "You’d want to move to a state such as CA that doesn’t have a state tax on lottery winnings. Therefore, the max federal rate would be 39.6%. Additionally, you can net your gambling losses against your gambling winnings and only this amount is taxable. Therefore, you would have $259 million of losses to offset $259 million of gains. Your total taxable income would be $127 million…" So you actually could net a very respectable $77 million if you won all tickets including the sole winner of the jackpot.
Yes unfortunately. If you were the sole winner of the $1 Billion jackpot, you'd pocket a cool $195 Million overnight.
Yeah, what could go wrong? I'm sure most people with $259 million didn't get there with this kind of sense.
For the record, I am not advocating this. I was purely interested — especially with the jackpot as significant as it is — in what the numbers look like.
I won off of some scratch offs and used that money to buy my mega millions tickets. By doing this did I just increase my chances of winning by transferring my luck onto the mega millions ticket? Eff yo probabilities gatsby!
