"You're only looking at one drawing here or there."
I clearly compared the only three runs with jackpots over $200 million since the last matrix change.
"The sales at the start of a run are much lower even with more states."
Did you miss the memo saying there are now a possible 258,890,850 outcomes, sales for Friday were 44 million, about a 17% of chance of a winner, and the numbers on the tickets are only valid for the day of that drawing?
While a portion of the amount of sales is applied to the next drawing when there is no jackpot winner, all the combinations on tickets sold for previous drawings are invalid. From what I saw, sales on $15 million jackpots varied by almost $6 million, but sales were about the same over $100 million jackpots to the end of the run. Any drawing sales under $100 million has less than a 38% of having a jackpot winner and you're saying there is significance to jackpots at the start of a run that have about a 7% chance of having a winner. And probably a contributing factor to the start-up sales.
"Once again, selecting data (2 data points) to support your argument."
The matrix changed on 10/19/2013 and I compared the three runs that went over $200 million with a 5/75 + 1/15 matrix and sales were about the same in each run. Ignoring the fact the PB matrix and the price of a ticket changed in 2012 doesn't make an argument about smaller sales any better. When this run is over the Friday MM ticket sales should slightly lower because of the Monopoly game.
One person actually believes one drawing sales of $44 million should have increased the jackpot from $226 million to $1 billion and another is surprised the jackpot wasn't won even though there was less than 20% of the possible combinations sold. When the jackpot gets to the point when a ticket buying frenzy kicks in, we'll see if ticket sales are really that bad.
By the way, the 18th drawing of a run that produced a $640 million jackpot in early 2012 before the matrix change had a $94 million jackpot on sales of $28,218,276 for that drawing. The 18th drawing in the current run had a $226 million jackpot on sales of $44,498,322 for that drawing.
Maybe you can explain the significance of ticket sales on drawing nights when there is less than 20% chance of a jackpot winning ticket.