#55 Powerball Lottery

The Powerball Lottery is an exciting way to lose small amounts of money. If you purchase a $2 ticket, you can pick six numbers: five drawn from 1 to 69, and a sixth “Powerball” number drawn from 1 to 26. The order of the numbers doesn’t matter. If the lottery selects your six numbers, you win $1.586 billion dollars! Except you won’t win, because your odds are 1 in 292,201,338. But if you spent $200 on 100 tickets, your odds would be . . . 1 in 2,922,013. You won’t win that either, but at least you’ll lose 100 times as much money. The more you like losing money, the more fun the lottery is!

To help you visualize how ...

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