Lottery Mania Essay

399 Words2 Pages
Comtemporary math Probability Lottery Mania "Lottery Mania" by Keith Devlin brings out a lot of eye opening scenarios in the world of probability. It plays both sides of the field. All the sides that the lottery may be the perfect idea at getting rich quick, along with the downfall that there is about a 1 in 67,108,184 chance that you will win. I found this fascinating with all the people that buy lottery tickets daily in hopes of that being the "lucky ticket" but do the thoughts go through their mind that the shot of them actually winning is 1 in a 1,000,000 chance they will win. Well although these people may understand that concept, it doesn't keep them from playing. $1 is not much to the average american. Not at all in fact. $1 may go to a soda on the way to work, or to buy a newspaper, but very rarely do people think about how these meaningless dollars can add up. A person may buy a lottery ticket once a week for a thousand weeks in a row. So without thinking about that is $1000 spent they are seeing it as $1 a week. Without winning this person is doing nothing but adding more money to the lottery pot that they more than likely will never win. It seemst that the people are striving for something they will never have and the gratification from others doing it too, just gives them more motivation to do it. Devlin says with all the combination of numbers in the lottery it could take 15 years to go through all the numbers once. On the upside though Devlin speaks of the positve amounts of the lottery. The lottery is still around today, because in the end, people do win. It is hard to believe with all the combinations of numbers out there that people do win. With probability it is possible though. The odds may be against you, but you do have a chance just as long as you buy a ticket. Without a ticket the odds are literally
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