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June 22, 2005
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What it boils down to is terminology and nothing else.
Sure the method of how you could describe a situation, could be techinical, but it's very simple. No matter what you call it....If I buy 20 tickets, still have 980 other contenders. I could've become a contender.......
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October 16, 2005
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You are looking at the math error and not getting the point. You still are confusing odds and combinations. There are online dictionaries to look up the differences. Your odds still remain at 1:1000. The combinations are off.
If you spend another $10 so a total of $20 for one drawing it would be 1:50. That would be your math error.
Total odds / unique tickets. To reach 1:1 you would have to cover all 1000. At over 500 tickets your odds would be 1 plus a fraction.
So the short version is odds are NOT the same as combinations. No one advertises combinations. They usually advertise your chance of winning any prize which is far to difficult to grasp is you can't even cover the difference between odds and combinations in the first place.
As near as I can tell, everybody is confused, but not about the same things. If you have 10 numbers for a game with 10,000 possible numbers your probability of winning is 10 in 10,000. Your tickets include 10 outcomes out of the 10,000 that are possible.
The odds that the winning number will be among the 10 numbers that you have tickets for and not among the 9990 numbers that you don't have tickets for are 10 to 9990. 10 of the numbers that could be drawn will be among the 10 you've got tickets for and 9990 of the numbers won't be among your 10.
Odds and probability are both ratios, which means that they can be simplified, just like fractions, which is 3rd grade math. 2/4 is the same as 1/2 and, as is common when talking about the odds of a coin toss, 50/50 is the same as 1 to 1. The probability of winning a pick 4 when you have 10 tickest simplifies to 1 in 1000, which gives you odds of 1 to 999.
In common speech "odds" is often used when the proper term is probability. It may be technically wrong, but it only matters to a mathematician or those who are more hung up on the definition than understanding the basic concepts Unless you're placing a sports bet "odds" refers to the probability of an event, properly expressed as the chances of the event occurring relative to the chances of the event not occurring. How much something pays out,which may be expressed as a ratio and referred to as "odds", is a different matter. team may be favored to win a game, but there is no way to determine the true odds of that happening.
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June 22, 2005
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I know I'm preaching to the choir, but there is one thing I do want to point out.
I'm in no way saying that winning the jackpot is totally out of the question in any way or form. The following presentation is just an example of one perspective. It's merely a sort of a wakeup call for me.
If you had a lottery who's odds were 20 million to one, and the jackpot was 100 million bucks, and somehow you were able to purchase 19 million tickets, knowing with great certainty, you were going to be the sole winner........... you would still have to beat a million to one, in order to win.
Think about it. You just bought 19 million tickets. That seems like alot of ground was covered, and that's fine. But you still have one million odds not covered. So now.....You're odds are still....a whopping.. million to one.
The moral of this story is.......We could have the finest system in the world, but the odds will always be the reality, and in my personal opinion.......when dealing with these kinds of odds, unlike the p-3 and the p-4... luck is more prevalent than any other source......and again, that's just one man's opiness.
If you bought 19 million of 20 million possible combinations there would be a million combinations that would result in losing, but your odds would be 19 million in 20 million, or 19 in 20. That's a 95% chance of having the winning combination. Those would be extremely good odds, but you'd be risking the entire 19 million dollars.
I think you've got it......
I just realized that even though a million possiblities still existed out there, the bottom line is that you've covered 95 percent of the situation. I think the problem I was having was that the sheer number of a million threw me off, because I really didn't realize, or it just didn't register at the time, that I was covering 95 percent. How stupid of me...I should have seen that sooner....DUH!!!!!
It doesen't matter what amount you apply to the equation, it will always be 95 percent.......LOL....It could be a trillion odds to beat instead of a million, but you have 95 percent covered......
Thanx for the heads up KY Floyd....
95 percent of anything will always remain 95 percent, no matter what the amount.
My analogy was actually backwards, but the moral of the story I talked about still stands.
I meant to say that by buying a SMALL amount of tickets, not LARGE, those let's say ten tickets only represent 10 out of a thousand, and no matter how well a system might be seemingly great in filters or whatever method someone uses, the bottom line is that there are 990 other prospective applicants waiting in line, so to speak.
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June 22, 2005
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I meant to say that by buying a SMALL amount of tickets, not LARGE, those let's say ten tickets only represent 10 out of a thousand, and no matter how well a system might be seemingly great in filters or whatever method someone uses, the bottom line is that there are 990 other prospective applicants waiting in line, so to speak.
I just got a little dyslexic....
What it should've read was:
Again..............I say that by buying a SMALL amount of tickets, not LARGE, those let's say ten tickets only represent 10 out of a thousand, and no matter how well a system might be seemingly great in filters or whatever method someone uses, the bottom line is that there are 990 other prospective applicants waiting in line, so to speak.