UK National Lottery

[Ringo]

Well, the chances of you being born were between 1 in 40 million and 1 in 1.2 billion, depending upon your father's...err, vim.

Source: Live Science "In fact, the average male will produce roughly 525 billion sperm cells over a lifetime and shed at least one billion of them per month. A healthy adult male can release between 40 million and 1.2 billion sperm cells in a single ejaculation.

Compare that to a Ram which releases about 95 BILLION per money shot.

 

[Ermintruder]

https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/life-changing/winner-euromillions-davies

Last month's family syndicate, who reportedly won £61m. All standard cliches apply. A family member begging another to go out and buy a ticket. Surgical interventions in response to cancer.

Winning is just like living the dream,” she (Sonia) said and Keith added, “now we really are minted!”

Perhaps... although maybe not in the conventional British idiomatic sense. But certainly, you're also all quite heavily Photoshopped....
http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=457cc55b6971cfd553b33cef561cbe0bea3ca9fd.647968&show=ela

(nb just ignore me, I doubt far too much. This couldn't be anything other than real)

 

[Xanatic*]

How did you arise at the odds 28 billion to 1, for winning twice?

 

[Gashead]

https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/life-changing/winner-euromillions-davies

Last month's family syndicate, who reportedly won £61m. All standard cliches apply. A family member begging another to go out and buy a ticket. Surgical interventions in response to cancer.

Perhaps... although maybe not in the conventional British idiomatic sense. But certainly, you're also all quite heavily Photoshopped....
http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=457cc55b6971cfd553b33cef561cbe0bea3ca9fd.647968&show=ela
View attachment 3184

(nb just ignore me, I doubt far too much. This couldn't be anything other than real)

On the plus side , it does seem to have given us a good olympics!

 

[David Plankton]

Crushed by a meteor- 1 in 700,000.
Struck by lightning- 1 in 2,300,000.
Dying from food poisoning- 1 in 3,000,000.

What now? Meteors before lightning?

I may never leave the house again. If my kitchen wasn't such a mess.

Loads of people die from food poisoning all the time, I've had a little bit of it myself. But meteors?

 

[Ermintruder]

How did you arise at the odds 28 billion to 1, for winning twice?

T'was not me, and the odds (if true) are considerably worse than that....

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-kathleen-long-euromillions-double-5441218

The pair scooped the big money prize for the second time on Friday night, beating odds of more than 283 billion to one

This cannot be real.

 

[Ermintruder]

What now? Meteors before lightning

like 76.5% of statistics... probably all made-up.

 

[David Plankton]

This cannot be real.

Does anyone here have Premium Bonds?

I have some and check online once a month to make sure I'm still poor. They tell you the sex, location and amount invested of that months winners. That's all.

Now call me a cynic but....

 

[Ermintruder]

Premium bonds are bonded mainly to realities. Lottery wins are bonded to many unrealities.
Subjective opinion....but strong.

 

[David Plankton]

Premium bonds are bonded mainly to realities.

Know any winners? Substantial ones.

 

[Tribble]

Regarding the odds of death by meteor - there's a bugger-all chance of being struck one-one by a lump of space debris (pretty much only 1 confirmed, recorded hit and that was non-fatal), but odds shorten a fair bit if you play the long game and include biosphere-destroying asteroid impacts :

Putting a probability number on the chances of being hit by a space rock is difficult, since the events are so rare. Still, Tulane University earth sciences professor Stephen A. Nelson published a paper in 2014 that made the effort. He put the lifetime odds of dying from a local meteorite, asteroid, or comet impact at 1 in 1,600,000.

Compared with 1 in 90 for a car accident, 1 in 250 for a fire, 1 in 60,000 for a tornado, 1 in 135,000 for lightning, 1 in 8 million for a shark attack, or 1 in 195 million for winning the PowerBall lottery.

Nelson put the risk of dying from a large, global asteroid or comet impact at 1 in 75,000. If that seems surprisingly high, it's because when massive objects have hit the Earth in the geologic past, they have wiped out millions of organisms, even whole species. Most of the creatures aren't killed from the direct impact, but from the aftereffects, which include heat, radiation, and dust that clouds out the sun.

Astronomer Alan Harris made a similar calculation, finding that a human being has a 1 in 700,000 chance of getting killed by an impact from space in their lifetime, with most of the risk coming from a large-scale event.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160209-meteorite-death-india-probability-odds/

 

[Xanatic*]

You don't think the Mirror might just have messed up their statistics? Remember that the event are not connected.

 

[Tribble]

How did you arise at the odds 28 billion to 1, for winning twice?

Calculating the odds of winning a second time is complicated. It depends - over how long a timeframe, how often do they play, how many tickets do they buy? Every ticket has a 1 in 6,473,989 chance of winning the 2nd prize (I'm guessing that's what these people won, since they got 1 mil each time). The chances of winning twice in a row would be 1 in (6,473,989)^2 - about one in 42 trillion. But those odds will steadily drop over time as they play more and more tickets, tending towards 1 in 1 if they play tickets for eternity.*

Most likely they pulled the figure from a "Did you know these amazing facts?"-type website or something.

* Disclaimer : I'm not a mathematician and my probability waffling may be as accurate as the paper's.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Know any winners? Substantial ones.

I've known a couple of people who won something like £25k each.

 

[Ermintruder]

Know any winners? Substantial ones.

Well, precisely. I don't. But I'm walking a fine line of concordance with official reality, and attempting to make myself believe that there are, truely, hundreds of new GB £millionaires created every year, courtesy of NS&I's ERNIE.

But, internal truths will out....I just don't believe that either. There's a longer-term tens-of-thousands-won-by-sombody's-aunt real-deal feeling about middle-sized Premium Bonds. But...six-figure super-prizes???

Plus, the whole Nat'l Lottery 'periodic 25 new UK millionaires tonight jetted off to New Zealand for an all-expenses holiday....' hmm...

It's hugely....non-real. Rather than unreal. I really do hope I'm wrong, and prove myself such, by winning a serious prize. But we all know I won't....

 

[Tribble]

Well, precisely. I don't. But I'm walking a fine line of concordance with official reality, and attempting to make myself believe that there are, truely, hundreds of new GB £millionaires created every year, courtesy of NS&I's ERNIE.

But, internal truths will out....I just don't believe that either. There's a longer-term tens-of-thousands-won-by-sombody's-aunt real-deal feeling about middle-sized Premium Bonds. But...six-figure super-prizes???

Plus, the whole 'periodic 25 new UK millionaires tonight jetted off to New Zealand for an all-expenses holiday....' hmm...

It's hugely....non-real. Rather than unreal. I really do hope I'm wrong, and prove myself such, by winning a serious prize. But we all know I won't....

“The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons.”

 

[Ermintruder]

You don't think the Mirror might just have messed made up their statistics?.

Fixed that for you. An exceedingly-high proportion of news media content is merely entertainment, misdirection, mood enhancement and opera. Sometimes there is a defence of accidental misreporting, over-enthusiatic editorial or information overload. But aside from that, it's really mostly future media studies curriculum content and circular narrative.

I've known a couple of people who won something like £25k each.

Yes. And I've hugged a Lottery millionaire. But it still doesn't entirely gel.

 

[David Plankton]

And I've hugged a Lottery millionaire. But it still doesn't entirely gel.

I know of someone who won £1 million on the Euro lottery. FOAF but legit.

 

[Maviself]

The in-laws of a friend of mine won a substantial amount, she went with them to Camelot to pick up the cheque. Apparently it is an unmarked business unit on the outskirts of some unprepossessing town.
She wouldn't say how much and I wouldn't ask but I suspect it to be a couple of million. Sadly though, no amount of money can make up for the utter tragedies that family have been through

 

[Peripart]

I know someone who won over a million on the Lottery (OK, he shared the prize with his mate in their mini-syndicate), so it does happen to "real" people.

Unless we are proposing that the winners of most of the big prizes are not real people, I'm not sure what the conspiracy is here. And stats quoting odds of several gazillion to one against certain things happening - well, they're often cut and pasted by people who never studied statistics.

 

[Cochise]

Calculating the odds of winning a second time is complicated. It depends - over how long a timeframe, how often do they play, how many tickets do they buy? Every ticket has a 1 in 6,473,989 chance of winning the 2nd prize (I'm guessing that's what these people won, since they got 1 mil each time). The chances of winning twice in a row would be 1 in (6,473,989)^2 - about one in 42 trillion. But those odds will steadily drop over time as they play more and more tickets, tending towards 1 in 1 if they play tickets for eternity.*

Most likely they pulled the figure from a "Did you know these amazing facts?"-type website or something.

* Disclaimer : I'm not a mathematician and my probability waffling may be as accurate as the paper's.

As far as I understand the theory of probability - and I may not, because the textbook I read on it seemed to me to contain some errors - winning the lottery once has precisely no effect on your chances of winning again. It's like throwing six sixes in a row, the chances of that happening are low, but having thrown the first six it doesn't either lessen or increase your chances of throwing the next six. What exactly that means or why it is useful to know was not made clear. After all, if you've placed your bet on throwing six sixes it is of no consequence whatsoever how many you throw if it is less than six.

 

[PeteByrdie]

As far as I understand the theory of probability - and I may not, because the textbook I read on it seemed to me to contain some errors - winning the lottery once has precisely no effect on your chances of winning again. It's like throwing six sixes in a row, the chances of that happening are low, but having thrown the first six it doesn't either lessen or increase your chances of throwing the next six. What exactly that means or why it is useful to know was not made clear. After all, if you've placed your bet on throwing six sixes it is of no consequence whatsoever how many you throw if it is less than six.

That's exactly right. It's one of many examples of how our intuition is counter to reality. We feel that winning the lottery once would make it extremely unlikely to win again. Of course, we are extremely unlikely to win again, but no more so than we were to win once. Similarly, few people would put the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the lottery, thinking they would never come up, but they are no less likely to be drawn than any other sequence.

I'm sure Susan Blackmore did an experiment where she found people who believe in the supernatural are more likely to think that, after rolling a number on one die, it was less likely they would roll that same number again on the subsequent throw. Her hypothesis was that people who believe in woo woo have less awareness of probabilities and ascribe supernatural agents to unlikely, but still totally possible, events.

My neighbour's daughter's ex won a million on the lottery many years ago, so I don't doubt people win. However, I have noticed that, whenever the rules change (price rises, available numbers increase), I get a flurry of minor wins as though to keep me interested, then suddenly nothing for ages. Could just be coincidence, but there's no reason it couldn't be fixed. It was particularly disingenuous of them to increase the available numbers, thus decreasing your chances of a major win by a substation value, and sell it as giving people more choice. It was shortly after that happened that I stopped doing the lottery.

 

[Tribble]

Indeed, you have the same chance of winning each time, but the chance of winning twice is higher. The chance of rolling a 6 on a d6 is always (assuming a fair dice, properly rolled) 1 in 6. But the chance of rolling two sixes in a row is 1 in 36. The odds get even crappier if I'm trying to roll to throw a grenade down the throat of a Tatooine Krayt Dragon from the back of a land speeder in the Star Wars RPG, but that's another story.

For a brain-twisting probability puzzle, look at the Monty Hall problem.

 

[David Plankton]

Nothing to do with the lottery, but it was a competition scam...

I used to work with a woman whose son lived in London with his girlfriend. This girlfriend worked on the editorial team of a magazine, along the lines of Chat or Take A Break.
One week they ran a competition, the prize being quite an expensive holiday somewhere exotic. Only the magazine staff chose to ignore all of the (hundreds, thousands?) entries sent in by their readers and held their own office draw to win the prize.
The winner was the aforementioned girlfriend who took my colleagues son with her. They took photos and 'interviewed themselves', posing as Mr and Mrs XXXXX from Anytown, the write-up of which I actually got to read.

 

[Swifty]

A bloke I used to know from Tamworth was part of a work place syndicate that won the national lottery back in the early days. The problem was that although he'd been paying in to the scheme, he'd been ill that week so off work. Normally when that happened to anyone, his syndicate would pay someone's share (a couple of quid or whatever it was) but after they learned they'd won, they all decided to cut him out of the winnings. Bastards.

It messed his head up a bit having that done to him and he changed jobs, as I remember it he was also part of a TV documentary on this sort of thing.

 

[Peripart]

That's NFT, in my experience.

Normal for Tamworth, that is. A shite town full of... well, I'm sure there are some decent people there. I just haven't met them.

 

[Cochise]

It was particularly disingenuous of them to increase the available numbers, thus decreasing your chances of a major win by a substation value, and sell it as giving people more choice. It was shortly after that happened that I stopped doing the lottery.

I've cut back to one line once a week, just so I can amuse myself with what-ifery on Saturdays.

 

[OneWingedBird]

I'm sure Susan Blackmore did an experiment where she found people who believe in the supernatural are more likely to think that, after rolling a number on one die, it was less likely they would roll that same number again on the subsequent throw.

When I tried pointing out to colleagues in a previous job that probabilty has no memory, their reaction as to look at me funny and then say "That is exactly the sort of thing you would say"

Some people just don't get it.

 

[escargot]

A bloke I used to know from Tamworth was part of a work place syndicate that won the national lottery back in the early days. The problem was that although he'd been paying in to the scheme, he'd been ill that week so off work. Normally when that happened to anyone, his syndicate would pay someone's share (a couple of quid or whatever it was) but after they learned they'd won, they all decided to cut him out of the winnings. Bastards.

It messed his head up a bit having that done to him and he changed jobs, as I remember it he was also part of a TV documentary on this sort of thing.

The daughter of a neighbour of mine won a share in a work syndicate. Another colleague was cut out of 7-figure winnings when she didn't pay up on the vital week and was very bitter about it.

However, she'd often missed payments and been chased for them or fallen well behind and only coughed up grudgingly. I bet the other syndicate members were delighted to refuse her a share!

I'm in one at work and pay up front, £10 or so at a time. Nobody's cutting ME out!

 

[escargot]

When I tried pointing out to colleagues in a previous job that probabilty has no memory, their reaction as to look at me funny and then say "That is exactly the sort of thing you would say"

Some people just don't get it.

I (MA-level trained statistician) have discussed this interesting belief with Escet (particle physics PhD, top CERN Higgs boson analyst) and A.N. Other.

We tried hard to explain to A.N. Other that numbers show up on the dice or lottery purely by chance and that whatever numbers come up later are not influenced by them. There are no patterns.

A.N. Other insisted that there are indeed patterns and that by carefully studying the distributions of previous numbers one could predict which would be lucky in future.

Escet and I fell about laughing and challenged him to win next week's lottery.

As far as we know, he's still at work.