The powerball jackpot has rolled over and is now predicted to be $54.2M cash or $112M annuity. The jackpot reached a cash value of $49.9M, based on the www.lottoreport.com sales figures. My last sales estimate was $20.6M based on looking at jackpots from the previous run, and this was only off by 0.1M. (The jackpot figures are clearly understated in the advertising at this time and thus do not really predict sales.) By linear extrapolation from data from the previous large run, I am going to estimate that the next drawing will have $22.7M in sales. If is this is correct, if the lottery sells $22.7M in tickets this time, the probability of various numbers of winners is given in the following table:
0 |
85.59% |
1 |
13.32% |
2 |
1.04% |
3 |
0.05% |
The powerball lottery now has about a 9% chance of matching the last jackpot, and a 3% roughly, of rolling once past it. These are rough numbers Note that the exact values of such jackpots are complicated by the prize cap, which will click in at $365M, and of course, by the fact that the last jackpot was so capped.
The probability is about 47% that the jackpot will roll 4 more times, giving a jackpot that will probably be in the $180M-200M annuity range.