I mentioned to a colleague that I’d bought two lottery tickets for last weeks Euromillions draw instead of my usual 1 to double my chance at winning. He said “Yeah, that’s not how it works.” I’m sure he is right – but why?
In: 7847
You are actually correct and he is wrong – with one slight caveat.
You have to make sure your two lottery tickets don’t have the same set of numbers. If you have two different tickets with two different sets of numbers, you have indeed doubled your chances of winning.
I think your colleague was misunderstanding the math lesson he was trying to apply.
This is the math problem as you understood it, but simplified: take a 6-sided die. You know that, if you roll it, one of the six numbers will show up. You just have to bet on the right number to win the jackpot. So you bet on 1, but then you go “wait, if I do a second bet then I’m more likely to win!” so you bet on 2 as well. You’re only rolling the dice once, but now if the dice lands on 1 OR 2 you win. That actually is doubling your odds.
But this is the math problem as your colleague understood it, but simplified: take a 6-sided die. You know that, if you roll it, one of the six numbers will show up. So you bet on 1, roll it, and it lands on some number other than 1 and you lose. So you go “I’ll bet on 1 again, that doubles my odds of winning!” In this case your odds do not double, because each roll of the dice is a unique event. Dice don’t go ‘oh, I rolled 2 last time, I need to roll 1, 3, 4, 5, or 6 now!’ Each time you roll, the probability is calculated separately. (someone in another comment already did the math to show your actual odds in this kind of situation, so I won’t show that math here.)
TL;DR you’re actually right because you bought two tickets to the same lottery drawing. Your friend would be right if you bought a ticket this week and then a ticket next week and said ‘my odds are doubled!’
It *absolutely does* double your chances of getting a winning ticket! Your problem is that two times “next to no chance in hell of winning” still gets you “next to no chance in hell of winning.”
People don’t believe it is the issue.
Let’s say to start the odds are 1 in ten
If you have a 1 in 10 chance of winning something for each ticket you buy and you buy two tickets you have a 2 in 10 chance to win.
That’s the same as 1 in 5.
Up those odds to 1 in 140,000,000 and when you buy two tickets your odds are 2 in 140,000,000 or 1 in 70,000,000
I have tried to explain this to several people and the end result is they don’t understand it for some reason and don’t believe that buying 2 tickets increases your odds of winning by that much.
It’s very very basic math. However it’s still only 1 in 70,000,000 which is still terrible odds of winning
Well sure you double the chances of you having a winning ticket. Two is double one. And a lot of the responses get overly mathy trying to explain it. What I’m not seeing much of though is that the probability doesn’t really shift. If it’s one in a million per ticket it stays one in a million for both tickets. Buying a million tickets won’t guarantee a win.
Odds aren’t determined by the set number (sticking with 1 in a million, there aren’t just a million combinations of numbers, there’s way more). Plus most lotteries don’t have guaranteed wins *and* they have incremental wins. So that 1 in a million is that you win anything at all. Maybe it’ll be the buck you paid, maybe it’ll be the jackpot. And that’s where lotteries really get you. Each win between 1 and jackpot slashes the odds. To win the jackpot would be say 1 in 500 million. And winning nothing at all is the 500 million, not the 1.
So you’ve doubled your chances to get anything but the chance of getting nothing per ticket is still astronomically high. And “double” a tiny miniscule amount is statistically insignificant.
Either way, good luck. It’s fun to dream and there’s always a chance.
Assuming you picked two different numbers, you do double your chances at winning. They’re still infinitesimally small, but they’re doubled. Your friend is wrong.
This thread is full of more wrong answers than anything I have ever seen on Reddit, and I have seen some shit on Reddit.
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