the big lottery in western Canada is mathematicaly impossible to win (almost) yet people win somehow.....
the way it works is that you pick 6 numbers out of 49, no number can be picked twice. to get the odds we do this:
(49!) - (43!) which is really:
44 x 45 x 46 x 47 x 48 x 49
= 1 x 10^10
WOW, my chance of winning is 1 in 10 billion, don't i feel friggin lucky!
let's say they collect 10 million dollars, 5 million is the prize income tax is 50% so 2.5 million, spread out of 25 years we still technically get the 2.5 million BUT that excludes inflation. to find the amount of money the last year is worth we do this:
2,500,000 / 25 = $100,000 per year which sounds great right? NO WAIT! inflation let's just assume is 3% since i don't really know, the last year of money would be:
100,000 x 0.97^25 = $47,000 about in terms of real value.
lotteries are basically a big scam if they don't pay you in lump sum. lotteries are great in terms of fund raising though, my local hockey team has a lottery so that the team stays in this city instead of goin to the states. they have a lot of history in this city and we would hate to see them leave
history records show that many wars were payed for through lotteries, Napoleon payed for lots of his little projects by holding lotteries.