Expected value calculations are very hard to do here, because you need to estimate the number of people who will be buying tickets, which you need to calculate the odds of sharing a prize, as well as to determine the prize amount.  And estimation is really hard because there&#x27;s never been a prize this big.<p>FiveThirtyEight[1] estimates between 550 million and 1.2 billion tickets will be sold.   Their best estimate is 1 billion tickets sold, giving odds of sharing the prize at 97%.<p>This makes the Expected Value of a $2 ticket $1.34.  If you bought one ticket of every number, you&#x27;d be guaranteed to win, but after splitting the prize with the other winners and paying taxes, you will have lost money.<p>The powerball is a crappy lottery -- most other national lotteries give out a higher percentage of their intake.   For instance, Lotto 6&#x2F;49 in Canada reaches a par expected value around the $40 million dollar range.<p>The real losers of lottery schemes like this are the people who buy tickets when the prizes are low.<p>1: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fivethirtyeight.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;billion-dollar-powerball-lottery&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fivethirtyeight.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;billion-dollar-powerball...</a>