If you have never played the lottery, you might be asking
yourself if you have to guess your lotto numbers in exact order to win
the jackpot. Luckily, you don't have to; all you have to do is choose
your numbers and as long as they all get drawn, in any order, you win.
I say luckily
for a reason - The odds of winning the jackpot in a lottery are bad. If
you had to guess your numbers in exact order, it would be impossible
because the odds would be much worse. How much worse would it be? Read
on to see the math.
Let's look at an example. One of the most popular lotto formats in the world is 6/49, where you must match 6 numbers out of a possible 49. To calculate the odds of winning the 649 jackpot, you must calculate the following equation: (49x48x47x46x45x44)/(1x2x3x4x5x6). The answer is 13,983,816. That means that the odds of winning are 1-in-13,983,816. Now, if you had to guess the numbers drawn, but also had to guess the exact order that they are drawn, this is how you would calculate the odds: 49x48x47x46x45x44. The answer is 10,068,347,520. That means that the odds of winning the jackpot would be 1-in-10,068,347,520. That's more than 1-in-10-billion. Now that would be virtually impossible to win.
As it is now, hundreds of people win lottery jackpots every year. If people had to guess lotto numbers in exact order, we'd be lucky to see just one big winner in a five year period. If this were the case, most people wouldn't even play any more.
Let's look at an example. One of the most popular lotto formats in the world is 6/49, where you must match 6 numbers out of a possible 49. To calculate the odds of winning the 649 jackpot, you must calculate the following equation: (49x48x47x46x45x44)/(1x2x3x4x5x6). The answer is 13,983,816. That means that the odds of winning are 1-in-13,983,816. Now, if you had to guess the numbers drawn, but also had to guess the exact order that they are drawn, this is how you would calculate the odds: 49x48x47x46x45x44. The answer is 10,068,347,520. That means that the odds of winning the jackpot would be 1-in-10,068,347,520. That's more than 1-in-10-billion. Now that would be virtually impossible to win.
As it is now, hundreds of people win lottery jackpots every year. If people had to guess lotto numbers in exact order, we'd be lucky to see just one big winner in a five year period. If this were the case, most people wouldn't even play any more.
No comments:
Post a Comment