Why playing the lottery is never a good idea

[Mic Drop]

 

Terkan:

I let my students play this lottery simulator from the LA Times.

https://graphics.latimes.com/powerball-simulator/ I had them keep playing with $100 at a time for 5 minutes. Some would win, but they would be even deeper in the hole.

you can select bet your paycheck and put in a custom amount. I told them to play with one MILLION dollars, and go to lunch.

They came back and they all lost absolutely everything.

I let them run it again the next day. Same result.

2 lifetimes of money just… thrown out. Across 15 kids.

I hope they got the lesson. You MIGHT win big, and surely you will win a little sometimes, but you are going to lose. Always.

 

Its0nlyRocketScience:

That's rule one with gambling: the house always wins. They allow one gambler to win at the expense of others occasionally, but only to give the masses hope, so they keep throwing money at the house.

 

tjdux

The show futurama has a great line about this.

Mr wong (Amy's dad) owns the Mars casino and when they visit he says something like

"This casino pays out 1 billion every hour, and its usually to us" us being the house.