Odds of Winning a Lottery: Does Ticket Quantity Matter?

[hatrabbit]

Hello,

I'm wondering if a common assumption is correct: if the odds of winning a lotto game are, say, 1,000,000:1, will they remain proportional to the number of tickets purchased? For example in the above game if a person buys 2 tickets, will their odds be 500,000:1, 4 tickets probability being 250,000:1, etc. (as long as the tickets all have different numbers).

Thanks for any information

 

[Pengwuino]

Yes and that should be make sense considering if they bought 1,000,000 tickets, your probability of winning now have to be 1 (or 100%).

EDIT: This is dependent on what the "odds" are calculated from. If there is only 1 winning combination out of 1,000,000, then your idea is correct. However, as another member here pointed out, if you have 10 winning combinations out of 10,000,000, the "odds" can be said to be 1 in 1,000,000, but the probability is not as simple as the 1 win/1,000,000 combinations example.