Presence

I bought a ticket for last week's Mega Millions drawing, the jackpot having reached $260 million. I won. Not the whole thing, mind you, I just matched one number and the mega ball, netting me a cool $3. Today I dutifully reinvested my winnings, as no one won last week's drawing, and the jackpot is now up to $355 $370 million.

The workings of the lottery provide us with an interesting insight into human psychology. Mega Millions makes available on their website oodles of data for lottery buffs to sift through. There are people who use this information to calculate statistics on number occurrences and frequencies, looking for patterns or signs, all towards the end of predicting what the next numbers in the big jackpot. It's a shame they put so much effort into it, as the lottery process is completely random, and therefore there is just as much a possibility of one combination of numbers being drawn as any other. There's no point in picking your own numbers, or picking your lucky numbers, as past results have absolutely no bearing on the present drawing. You're just as well off letting the computer pick your numbers; even more, if you pick some common pattern or non-personal lucky numbers, you increase the chances of having to split the jackpot with someone else who picked the same numbers. Despite these facts, people insist on playing lucky numbers or using sophisticated calculations to attempt to predict winning numbers. The human mind seeks, without fail, to organize the world into predictable and manipulable patterns.

Even more, buying more than one ticket doesn't substantially increase your odds. The odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 176 million. If you buy two tickets, you increase your odds to 1 in 88 million, which is better, but still quite a long shot. If, however, you had the cash, and a computer program to ensure complete coverage of all possible combinations of numbers, you could invest 176 million in tickets and get back $370 million; the only problem is that you would have to take it paid out as an annuity, rather than a lump sum, so you'd be more than doubling your overall net worth, but tying up your cash for 26 years, not to mention taxes...probably not worth it).

I've got a good feeling about my numbers; Gershmans tend not to win things like raffles (Ezra didn't win the Rambam Saturday night learning raffle once this whole year, while friends of ours won on a pretty much weekly basis), so perhaps it's our turn! Either way, the drawing is tonight at 11PM EST, wish me luck!