National Lottery Syndicates
mathmatical help with the lottery?
hi. i run a lottery syndicate at work and we have ammassed close to £300 winnings. We’re going to take a long shot and put it all on lucky dips, but is it statistically better to buy 300 tickets from one shop or lots of tickets from lots of different shops?? Or is there no difference in odds? Also, for you mathmaticians – i know its 1 in 14million chance to win the UK National Lottery, but what are my odds if i’ve got 300 (i don’t think its simply 300 in 14million, or 1 in 46666)
There should be no difference in odds regardless of where you purchase them, but we can’t be sure if the lottery is slightly biased.
And if you’ve got 300 tickets, the odds of winning is simply 300 in 14 million as you said because you’ve got 300 shots at a 1 in 14 million prize.
Think of it this way. If there is a pot with 5 balls in it. 4 with ‘lose’ written on and one with ‘win’ written on.
If you’re allowed to choose one ball, your odds are 1/5.
If you instead can choose two balls, you now have a 2 in 5 chance of choosing a win ball because the odds of the first ball being a winner and the odds of the second ball being a winner are both 1/5. and 1/5 + 1/5 = 2/5. It’s the same principal with the lottery tickets.
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