Powerball

The system is rigged for the 1%...

 

Why isn't it 69x68x67x66x65x26?

 

You buy every possible number, you would spend just under 600 million.........take the lump sum, that wouldn't even be 350 million.......what would be the point of that?

 

That's 35.5 billion combinations.

It might actually be that if you had to pick the numbers in the exact order they were drawn. But you don't. Your "2-4-6-8-10" combination can actually be drawn as "10-4-6-2-8". You still win, because you had all the numbers. That cuts down the number of combinations severely and makes the odds much better.

I think.

 

Because order doesn't matter. So it's (69*68*67*66*65/5!)*26

Edit: BTE beat me to it.

 

Jackpot just passed $900,000,000.

900 million dollars.

 

Well, I forgot that they raised the price of a ticket to $2. Was think the cost to buy every number was around $300 million, so with a $400 million payout you could make a tidy profit.

Didn't someone actually try to do this a few years back, though? Or at least just buy a crap ton of tickets to beat the odds? Seem to remember some stories along those lines one time when it was about a $300 million jackpot.

 

The last time there was a huge jackpot, I think someone calculated that there wasn't enough time for all the ticket combinations to get printed.

 

Can You Ever Guarantee A Mega Millions Win?

Plus, there was a screwed up game in Massachusetts that a couple of groups figured out how to beat.

 

We've had at least two threads on it. One of the instances was Va.'s lottery in 1992. A consortium out of Australia tried to buy all the numbers.

 

Group Invests $5 Million To Hedge Bets in Lottery

 

Your conclusion is correct, but technically, the 35.5 billion figure you cited would be the number of permutations. It's why the proper statistical symbol for the 5-number portion of the drawing would be (69C5)(26P1) instead of the (69P5)(26P1) that would give you 35.5 billion.