comment: >
  
  Yeah the odds have always been high. And if you simply want to win money by gambling a casino would be better. 
  But it's a fun little thing to toss $2-10 dollars at when the pit gets this high for us. Makes for a nice daydream till we see the drawings and lose. Half the time we at least make our money back at least.
context: They really need to update the three digit signs if this is going to happen more often. >
  
  They changed the odds to get these huge jackpots. It seems to work drawing people in. >
  
  I wonder, though, if people will begin to realize that the odds are even worse and they stop playing. I'm not sure it does the game all that much good to go so far between there being winners. I think the long spell between winners diminishes the enthusiasm. I'm not sure if the numbers bear any of this out though. >
  
  I guess? But the odds went from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million. It's not like it was so attainable before. >
  
  It’s like one person in USA will win, but not if you don’t buy a ticket! Hmm, now what else can I pawn to secure my winnings… >
  
  Ok but a lottery ticket is cheaper than a cup of coffee and comes with a chance of winning money. Skip your coffee that day and even if you lose you’ll still be saving $.50. >
  
  Why skip just 1 coffee?  If it's "worth it" (positive expected value), then why not skip the entire week's (or month's!) worth of coffee?  That's the problem.
  In reality, the EV calculations are a bit more complicated than they seem at face value.  Not only do you need to factor in the basic pot odds and the chance/cost of a split, you also have state-level factors to factor in (IIRC California caps the secondary "big" prizes to $1M, for instance), plus there's some degree of uncertainty on what the actual jackpot total will be.  They usually estimate it pretty accurately, though sometimes the estimates are low -- but it's not known precisely until the drawing.  The other issue is that the publicized number is really ~2X what the actual jackpot is, which borders on predatory IMO (they advertise the 30-year annuity value).
  I ran the numbers last time the jackpot was large.  It was ever-so-slightly positive EV (in most states, at least).  The unfortunate reality, though, was that the vast majority of the expected value came from the jackpot itself -- which is subject to the highest variance by far, obviously.  
  If you have an endless money supply, that's fine;  but for the rest of us (proverbially speaking), it's kind of like buying "reverse insurance", and you're paying to be subjected to extremely high variance. >
  
  Lighten up dude, you’re not gonna die penniless if you buy a lottery ticket every once in a while. >
  
  Yeah, I hear ya -- I bought some last time the jackpot was large -- I'm "lighter" on it than it probably sounds.  I feel it's generally regressive, nonetheless. >
  
  Ya I think I’ve bought 6 lottery tickets in my life. Obviously if you’re spending a large amount of your income on something you’re most likely going to lose you’re an idiot lol. >
  
  A lot of money being pumped through this thing. A billion dollar winner just a few weeks ago. >
  
  The essentially made it twice as hard to win recently >
  
  I'm not from the US so I don't know how the winners are chosen, but in my country, the lottery works by pulling a set of numbers from a drum. The amount of people playing has no impact on your likelihood of winning. But it's more likely you might share the jackpot with someone else. This is still pretty rare as far as I know. >
  
  They do essentially the same thing here. But they pick 5 random numbers then 1 extra separate random number form a different drum of numbers.
  So the initial 5 numbers come from a pool of say 70 numbers. Then the final number comes from a pool of 50 numbers. The final number pool used to be 30 numbers. But they added 20 more so that no one would win and the prize would roll over and get larger. Larger prizes mean more ticket sales and pr >
  
  I was going to go buy a ticket just for fun cause I've never done that, but fuck that lol. I know it's all a sham and the odds of winning are astronomical, but doing something like that is so ridiculous