Should a scientist never buy a lottery ticket?

[Drakkith]

Wow, just writing to note that my post has sparked quite a lively discussion where almost nobody replied "But on average you lose!".
The more I think of it, I realize that the important question - if you are really in it for the chance of winning - is not what the expectation value is, but what is the probability of winning big. Being ridiculously low, as it is for lotteries, you can only justify what you do by saying that you do it for the thrill.

As a pension plan, it is obviously idiotic.

I gamble to have fun, or for the 1 in a million chance of winning big in the case of lottery tickets. That's it. I don't play "to win big", as it is very very unlikely. I have made money gambling, usually by simply getting lucky one night and leaving while I am a few hundred up. Of course, this is offset by the times that I have left with a total loss.

 

[Drakkith]

And, indeed, she claimed she leaves casinos as soon as she wins. This suggested to me she has a well-proven system that could potentially make her rich.

I don't know why that suggests that she has a well-proven system that could make her rich. Sounds to me like she's simply a little bit lucky, with enough smarts to leave while she's still up.

 

[Dickfore]

Just as a repetition:

I've often won with gambling, also at the roulette table. The trick is to realize it's going to be lost money and to start running the moment that you win.

I don't buy lottery tickets on a regular basis, since the chances of winning are so low, but sometimes it's worth the thrill of tempting luck.

So, do you lose sometimes?

Not more than I've won.

Wow, great! You must be a millionaire by now.

What kind of a remark is that?

So, the bolded words imply to me that she has a worked-out system, a trick if you will, that let's her win more than she loses in a repetitive fashion, since she claims to do it often.

Then, when I asked her if she is a millionaire, she started wondering why people ask her, and, of course, we had the knight in shining armor defend her honor.

 

[Drakkith]

So, the bolded words imply to me that she has a worked-out system, a trick if you will, that let's her win more than she loses in a repetitive fashion, since she claims to do it often.

Then, when I asked her if she is a millionaire, she started wondering why people ask her, and, of course, we had the knight in shining armor defend her honor.

The lynchpin is that you have to win first. If you don't win, you can't walk away with money. And winning doesn't usually mean win just once. If I'm playing roulette I can win a dozen times and lose twice but still be down depending on how I'm betting.

Honestly your statement Wow, great! You must be a millionaire by now. is extremely sarcastic. Is it any wonder you had the responses you had?

 

[Dickfore]

The lynchpin is that you have to win first. If you don't win, you can't walk away with money. And winning doesn't usually mean win just once. If I'm playing roulette I can win a dozen times and lose twice but still be down depending on how I'm betting.

I tend to agree with you on this one.

Some people do not understand those, and this is perpetuating a false optimism for gambling. You can see their psychology, when they start with the sentence:

"If I win on the first trial,..."

Wrong! There is a far bigger, or at least equal chance to lose on the first trial! Then, all the rest of the text is useless, unless they try again. And again.

Honestly your statement Wow, great! You must be a millionaire by now. is extremely sarcastic. Is it any wonder you had the responses you had?

It is, and it was intended to emphasize the absurdity that she wins more than she loses on a regular basis. Honestly, if I had found some scheme like that, I would be trying to get as much money as possible.

 

[Monique]

So, the bolded words imply to me that she has a worked-out system, a trick if you will, that let's her win more than she loses in a repetitive fashion, since she claims to do it often.

Then, when I asked her if she is a millionaire, she started wondering why people ask her

Why are you behaving so ignorantly? Yes, it's possible to win, yes it's possible to loose, yes, it's possible to play even.

It is, and it was intended to emphasize the absurdity that she wins more than she loses on a regular basis. Honestly, if I had found some scheme like that, I would be trying to get as much money as possible.

Come on, have I said that I game on a regular basis? I said that when I gambled I've often won, for you to deny such a possibility is absurd.

 

[Dickfore]

Why are you behaving so ignorantly? Yes, it's possible to win, yes it's possible to loose, yes, it's possible to play even.

And what exactly does this tautology have to do with the topic at hand?

Come on, have I said that I game on a regular basis? I said that when I gambled I've often won, for you to deny such a possibility is absurd.

No, you said I've often won at gambleing, even at the roulette table. To have won often, it is necessary to had played at least as often as having won. Also, you said that you won more than you lost. I find this statement highly improbable, and your further claims about initial probabilities and such made my suspicion even more founded. I suspect you are biased in remembering the times you won more vividly than the times you lost.

Did you keep track of your bets? Did you keep track of your wininings? Did you keep track of the times you had gambled and the total time spent?

 

[Monique]

It is very easy and uncomplicated: I have won more money than I lost.

 

[Andre]

Luck is a strange thing in my experience. Never had any luck in the national lottery, occasionally a break even but most of the time a waste of money. Well you buy the thrill of fantasy.

However on one of my assigments in the NATO we had a good multi-national social interaction and there was a weekly bunco-night. You just role dice and there is absolutely no decision to take. Pure chance. Just role, socialize and have fun. Eventually, we had no idea where to store all the useless stuff we won. It was just shameless, I hardly remember leaving without a price. Clearly far more than our fair share.

 

[daveb]

My bold

Also, you said that you won more than you lost. I find this statement highly improbable, and your further claims about initial probabilities and such made my suspicion even more founded.

You do realize that for every game, there is a distribution of people who win more than they lose and people who lose more than they win? True, (assuming the probabilites are fair and not skewed due to cheating) the distribution is skewed so that the total money lost by the losers is more than the money won by winners, but there is someone somewhere that happens to have won more than they lost. Monique is claiming to be one of those people. Why is this so hard to believe?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Monique's "system" seems to be "quit while you're ahead". This means that, whenever you reach a point where you have won more money than you have lost, you stop playing.

I have been to a casino once in my life and decided to try the same strategy. After having gamboled with $3.00 (penny slot machines) I found I had won $3.34. There, I stopped playing.

It is not possible to get rich doing this. I think it is possible to win more in the long run than you lose, however. The next time I went to the casino my rule would be to put a limit on how much I was willing to lose. If I set that limit at 5 cents, I would stop playing as soon as I'd lost that amount. I would still be ahead 29 cents over all. If I continued with that limit on loss night after night I could go 5 more nights and still correctly say I had won more than I lost. When my profit was down to 4 cents, if it came to that without me winning again, I would have to quit gambling altogether but could still say I'd won more than I lost overall.

So, you can play several times, quite accurately claim you've won more than you lost, and still be far from rich.

 

[Dickfore]

Monique's "system" seems to be "quit while you're ahead". This means that, whenever you reach a point where you have won more money than you have lost, you stop playing.

I have been to a casino once in my life and decided to try the same strategy. After having gamboled with $3.00 (penny slot machines) I found I had won $3.34. There, I stopped playing.

It is not possible to get rich doing this. I think it is possible to win more in the long run than you lose, however. The next time I went to the casino my rule would be to put a limit on how much I was willing to lose. If I set that limit at 5 cents, I would stop playing as soon as I'd lost that amount. I would still be ahead 29 cents over all. If I continued with that limit on loss night after night I could go 5 more nights and still correctly say I had won more than I lost. When my profit was down to 4 cents, if it came to that without me winning again, I would have to quit gambling altogether but could still say I'd won more than I lost overall.

So, you can play several times, quite accurately claim you've won more than you lost, and still be far from rich.

Monique, is this what you did?

 

[lisab]

Monique's "system" seems to be "quit while you're ahead". This means that, whenever you reach a point where you have won more money than you have lost, you stop playing.

I have been to a casino once in my life and decided to try the same strategy. After having gamboled with $3.00 (penny slot machines) I found I had won $3.34. There, I stopped playing.

It is not possible to get rich doing this. I think it is possible to win more in the long run than you lose, however. The next time I went to the casino my rule would be to put a limit on how much I was willing to lose. If I set that limit at 5 cents, I would stop playing as soon as I'd lost that amount. I would still be ahead 29 cents over all. If I continued with that limit on loss night after night I could go 5 more nights and still correctly say I had won more than I lost. When my profit was down to 4 cents, if it came to that without me winning again, I would have to quit gambling altogether but could still say I'd won more than I lost overall.

So, you can play several times, quite accurately claim you've won more than you lost, and still be far from rich.

All it would take is one big (or even moderately big) win to make this "system" plausible.

As far as playing lotto-type games: yes, when the jackpot gets large we start a pool here at work. I know the chance of winning big is vanishingly small. But it's worth the esprit de corps to put a couple dollars into the pot.

 

[BobG]

To me it's all about risk vs reward. The risk is very low since I'm only giving up about 3 bucks, but the reward is enormous. The chance is low that I'll win it big, but IF I do...hoo boy I am going to buy so many telescopes...

With the risk vs reward being the probability of a life changing event? Losing $3 is not a life changing event while winning the lottery is a life changing event. No risk; some small chance of reward.

Of course, one way to increase the chances of this being a life changing event is to turn every bit of assets you own into cash and go drop that on one roll of the roulette table. 100% guarantee of a life changing event - probably not the life changing event you were hoping for, though.

Risk and benefits just can't be measured linearly and I don't think the average net loss per dollar spent really says anything relevant unless the person is considering a career in playing slot machines.

In which case, the only questioning is which would happen first - go positively nuts from staring at a slot machine and pulling a lever or go broke. But I generally get bored very quickly by casino games - I just don't see whatever it is that can get some people addicted.

I did use to like horse racing when you could watch it live at a local track. That was more like watching and betting and cheering a sporting event and I could usually wind up a little ahead (you're competing against other bettors instead of the house). But that's no fun, so the last race I'd always bet whatever I had left on the longest shot. Who wants to go home and say they won $3.35? You want the big event - a payday at least over $100. And if you didn't go with all that much money in the first place, you've had a day of entertainment for a fixed cost - no chance of a negative life changing event.

 

[Jakeus314]

I gambled 400 of my hard earned nickels... I left with 401. Did I gamble once or 400 times? I say 400 and true story.

 

[jim hardy]

Should a scientist never buy a lottery ticket?

not for monetary gain of course

but back in the 80's i bought a Florida Lotto ticket every week for a few months.
Three reasons:
1. I had just finished Carl Jung's "Synchronicity", and a friend had showed me the "I Ching"
2. I had a TI99 and was trying to improve my skill with Basic computer language.
3. I had because of some work i did come to realize the human eye and ear excel at recognizing patterns. A good ear can name the volinist and i double dog dare any spectrum analyzer to do that.

Back then you picked six of forty-nine numbers for Florida's lotto,

So i entered a year's worth of winning numbers into a 49 wide array
converted each to a 49 bit text string binary representation of the winning numbers by setting the six appropriate bits ,
printed the whole year out as text strings in both binary and hex format looking for a pattern,
looking for "Music of the Spheres" so to speak.
TI 99's basic math was 64 bit so it ran faster than one might expect of a $49 computer.

No pattern was apparent to me
so i wondered about other number bases
which led me into an interesting field,
irrational numbers and i bought a little book on them
but i was never smart enough to convert binary integers into base e or pi or Planck's constant.

So , as an engineer i bought some lottery tickets
and the payback was i learned to manipulate strings in Basic

plus an introduction to some far out math.
A couple years ago there was lots of stuff on 'net abut base e computers
but today i don't find any.


just my 2.718 cents worth..

old jim

 

[nonmendelian]

No, but not because taking risks that you would lose more than you gain is wrong but because there are more likely and productive ways to make your desired millions.

Kant's categorical imperative dictates that it people ought to take risks because we have very limited intelligence and taking chances is often the best way to discover new things. If 1000 people blow their life savings on a white elephant and only one turns out to be a success then it is ultimately good because that one success will benefit 7 billion people and many billions who will yet to be, up until the point where it would have been disscovered anyway.

 

[nonmendelian]

So i entered a year's worth of winning numbers into a 49 wide array
converted each to a 49 bit text string binary representation of the winning numbers by setting the six appropriate bits ,
printed the whole year out as text strings in both binary and hex format looking for a pattern,
looking for "Music of the Spheres" so to speak.
TI 99's basic math was 64 bit so it ran faster than one might expect of a $49 computer.

No pattern was apparent to me

Probably because the numbers were decided by a monkey in a hat knocking around a hamster ball full of bingo balls...