Lottery participants get caught in the "frenzy" of the new all-time high payout. The same "thing" WILL happen when the prize gets up to $375-million in the future, and $400-milllion and so on. People ignore the lower, 8-figure payouts as not being worthy of their money.
more people buy more chances of mega multiple winners...Imagine looking at those numbers the night before and thinking about the $355,000,000 only to find out 355 winners hit the same number...
>10,000 could pick the winning number if the winning combination happens to be a famous sequence (e.g. the above example from "Lost")
The payoff... that's whole idea, for me at least. The payoff gets big enough for me to basically throw away 5 or 10 bucks for a slim chance. The reason I don't play the $40m jackpot for $2 is the same as not playing $100 for a $300m one: too much money to throw away for too little return. Similar to buying DOTM options I guess.
Well I would disagree a bit here in that the lottery is the ultimate in risk/reward ratio. Obviously anybody that puts any real hope in it is a fool but the dollar is worth the 1 minute of a little excitement in their boring lives. They probably get a little more buzz from it than say buying a bagel.
That happened in the florida lottery once...it was a criss cross sequence and there was a bunch of winners..
I think there were probably a good number of tickets won with the Lost numbers. Good for $150, third prize, 3 of 5 +1. I did a few quick calculations using the eighth prize (1 of 5 +1) as reference: for this drawing the % of third prize winners / eighth prize winners is ~1.7% vs ~1% for the preceding drawings. This is statistically significant I'd say.
There was a fortune cookie sequence too some years back. They won 5 /5. The lottery commission launched an investigation thinking fraud was involved.
Its not just about winning the big one. People know the odds are against them, but you get this euphoria when you buy the ticket that lasts until the drawing when you find out you lose. Its a nice feeling for those couple days until the drawing. I think alot of people buy just to dream a little. Pretty much everyone wins. The losers get a light high and do not really feel bad if they dont win, the winner gets millions, and the state also gets millions for schools. Its a win-win-win situation if you think about it.