Do you think the Mega Millions Jackpot will get much higher??Prev TopicNext Topic

• petergrfn

  

  United States
  Member #26,329
  November 16, 2005
  330 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 20, 2009, 1:25 pm

  ▲▼

  It seems to me that if Powerball and MM are both large at the same time and one of them is hit then ineveitably the other gets hit in the next couple of draws..........I would like to see another   $300 + jackpot or even a record breaking $400 million plus......Anyone think there's a chance???????
• RJOh

  

  100

  mid-Ohio
  United States
  Member #9
  March 24, 2001
  20,272 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 20, 2009, 1:56 pm

  ▲▼

  It really doesn't matter to me because once it reaches $200M, I'm one of those millions who start playing hoping to win a piece of the jackpot. 

  With the additional players buying even more tickets, tickets sales can amount to  $80M or more which means there's a good chance that 50% of the possible combinations will be sold which also means there a 50% chance someone will win it.  It has been won many times in the past with lower ticket sales. 

  Last year when the jackpot reached $370M, ticket sales were more than $212M which meant there was a good chance of the winning combination being sold more than once which it was.

   * you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones * 

         
  
• four4me

  

  MD
  United States
  Member #1,701
  June 18, 2003
  10,731 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 20, 2009, 2:09 pm

  ▲▼

  Its a 50/50 bet it will either grow or be won. No one can answer that question with any certainty.

  With the economy being what it is and millions of people playing Mega no doubt people who never bought a ticket before will by one now. Chances favor it being won soon.

  Big John says. You don't hit the number. The number hits you!!!!

                 I'm not Big John, I'm Four4me, Big John's a friend.
• hearsetrax

  

  United States
  Member #52,343
  May 21, 2007
  3,790 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 20, 2009, 3:07 pm

  ▲▼

  

  
• Todd

  

  50

  Chief Bottle Washer

  New Jersey
  United States
  Member #1
  May 31, 2000
  27,923 Posts
  Online
  Aug 20, 2009, 4:48 pm

  ▲▼

  <Moved to Jackpot Games forum>

  Please post in the appropriate forum ... thank you.
• KY Floyd

  

  NY
  United States
  Member #23,834
  October 16, 2005
  4,771 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 20, 2009, 7:25 pm

  ▲▼

  Have you ever noticed that if they're both small and one rolls the other is likely to roll? It has nothing to do with what happens with the other game, and everything to do with how many tickets are sold. The lower the jackpot is the less likely that there will be a winner. The bigger it is the more likely there will be a winner, but it's almost never big enough that a winner is more likely than a roll.

  Selling 50% of the combinations, is  extremely unlikely until sales get a lot higher than 80 million tickets. Even if there wasn't a single duplicate it would still take 87.5 million before selling half of the combinations, and in the real world there are a lot of duplicates. It's not even close to a 50/50 proposition until they sell 200 million tickets. The current jackpot increase of 37 million means they're expecting to sell about 23 million tickets. Even if sales are higher than expected that still won't cover 15% of the combinations, so it's roughly an 85/15 split, or better than 5 to 1 in favor of a roll.

  Will it hit 400? There's always a chance, but who knows? A lot depends on the numbers that are drawn. Based on random probability there's far better than a 50% chance that it willl roll two more times, which should take it past 300. Breaking 400 will take 4 rolls. Chances of that are about 25 to 30% as a very rough guess.
• RJOh

  

  100

  mid-Ohio
  United States
  Member #9
  March 24, 2001
  20,272 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 20, 2009, 8:58 pm

  ▲▼

  Lottoreport has a chart showing tickets sales and jackpot amounts going back to 2004. Comments in my post were based on those figures.

   <snip>/mmsales.htm

  This post has been automatically changed by the Lottery Post computer system to remove inappropriate content and/or spam.

   * you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones * 

         
  
• gopher07

  

  Ottawa Ohio
  United States
  Member #53,427
  July 7, 2007
  253 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 20, 2009, 9:26 pm

  ▲▼

  DUMB QUESTION ....LP PERSON WILL WIN  IT NEXT DRAW
• fja

  

  100

  United States
  Member #91
  January 19, 2002
  16,125 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 21, 2009, 10:23 am

  ▲▼

  Date	Jackpot	Total Sales	California	Georgia	Illinois	Maryland	Massachusetts	Michigan	New Jersey	New York	Ohio	Texas	Virginia	Washington
  	(Millions)		Population	Population	Population	Population	Population	Population	Population	Population	Population	Population	Population	Population
  			36,756,666	9,685,744	12,901,563	5,633,597	6,497,967	10,003,422	8,682,661	19,490,297	11,485,910	24,326,974	7,769,089	6,549,224
  8/21/2009	$207	$	$	$	$	$	$	$	$	$	$	$	$	$
  8/18/2009	$170	$52,720,367	$7,659,320	$3,546,426	$4,018,014	$2,004,456	$2,235,966	$3,802,631	$6,920,300	$10,986,876	$3,707,013	$3,795,317	$2,876,586	$1,167,462	$105,440,734
  8/14/2009	$146	$46,563,150	$6,229,175	$3,475,104	$3,569,700	$1,887,765	$1,814,444	$3,503,210	$5,866,344	$9,778,224	$3,352,405	$3,398,328	$2,669,606	$1,018,845	$93,126,300
  8/11/2009	$124	$37,864,909	$5,414,898	$2,728,226	$2,887,099	$1,538,906	$1,466,170	$2,824,513	$4,540,423	$7,829,194	$2,674,653	$2,737,330	$2,295,976	$927,521	$75,729,818
  8/7/2009	$102	$34,663,319	$4,718,848	$2,534,149	$2,643,166	$1,508,875	$1,387,587	$2,659,531	$4,041,206	$7,166,603	$2,473,451	$2,521,106	$2,183,118	$825,679	$69,326,638
  8/4/2009	$84	$26,221,413	$3,894,995	$1,957,909	$2,038,335	$1,192,858	$1,067,351	$1,910,624	$2,793,455	$5,026,748	$1,848,990	$2,031,280	$1,760,355	$698,513	$52,442,826

   

  Historically at a 200+ Jackpot, sales average about $160 million...If they sold the same set of numbers twice you would have approx 48% of the combinations covered.   I would venture to think that about 70-75% of the numbers will be covered today. 

  "Everybody has to believe in something...I believe I'll have another beer!"   = W.C.Fields 
• RJOh

  

  100

  mid-Ohio
  United States
  Member #9
  March 24, 2001
  20,272 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 21, 2009, 10:39 am

  ▲▼

  The last time MM jackpot was $207M was on 12/12/08 which had total sales of $77,666,082 and it was won.

   * you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones * 

         
  
• fja

  

  100

  United States
  Member #91
  January 19, 2002
  16,125 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 21, 2009, 12:49 pm

  ▲▼
  In response to RJOh

  Quote: Originally posted by RJOh on Aug 21, 2009

  The last time MM jackpot was $207M was on 12/12/08 which had total sales of $77,666,082 and it was won.

  Yeah your right,  I totally read the graph wrong...

  everybody can disregard my comments,,,I made a big a calculation error....

  "Everybody has to believe in something...I believe I'll have another beer!"   = W.C.Fields 
• KY Floyd

  

  NY
  United States
  Member #23,834
  October 16, 2005
  4,771 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 21, 2009, 12:56 pm

  ▲▼

  "The last time MM jackpot was $207M was on 12/12/08 which had total sales of $77,666,082"

  It was a long, hot day yesterday, and my brain was overheated. I forgot to account for only about 1/3 of sales going to the jackpot, so the sales they're estimating should be about 3 times what I said, which puts it pretty close to an even 70 million tickets. A rollover is still the most likely result by a considerable margin.

  " I would venture to think that about 70-75% of the numbers will be covered today. "

  Unless sales are several times what's expected there's not a chance in the world that will happen. Every new combination that is sold increases the chances that future tickets will duplicate combinations that have already been used. Even the first million tickets sold will have some duplicates and won't use 1 million combinations. Once they sell 10% of combinations  there's 10% chance that the next ticket sold will duplicate one of the combinations that was already sold, so selling a million tickets only uses (a bit less than) 900,000 combinations. Sell 20% and 2 of the next 10 should be duplicates. Sell 30% and 3 of the next 10 should be duplicates, and so on. In the history of PB and MM there has never been a jackpot big enough to drive sales to the point where the the theoretical chance of a winner is much better than 50%.

  Also, once a combinatioin has been usedt twice, it can stil be used a 3rd, 4th, 5th time, etc. All of the combinations that aren't used are balanced by ones that are used multiple times. The chances of a specific combination being repeated are still small, but a tiny fraction of combinations will be repeated many times.

  That all assumes that combinations are issued randomly. For QP's that should be the case, but people choosing their own numbers are less likely to choose their combinations randomly, so that increases the  duplicates. Remember the fortune cookie PB numbers? If we ever do see 1,2,3,4,5 + 6 as the winning combination there will probably be thousands of jackpot "winners", who may collect only a few thousand bucks.
• RJOh

  

  100

  mid-Ohio
  United States
  Member #9
  March 24, 2001
  20,272 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 21, 2009, 1:14 pm

  ▲▼
  In response to fja

  Quote: Originally posted by fja on Aug 21, 2009

  Yeah your right,  I totally read the graph wrong...

  everybody can disregard my comments,,,I made a big a calculation error....

  When the MegaMillions or PowerBall jackpots reach $200M+, anything can happen.  The charts for PowerBall shows its $250M jackpot on 08/19/09 was won with only $65,842,626 in ticket sales which at best only covered 1/3 of the possible combinations.

   * you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones * 

         
  
• DC81

  

  MI
  United States
  Member #54,828
  August 31, 2007
  985 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 21, 2009, 1:42 pm

  ▲▼

  I don't care if it hits tonight or rolls a dozen more times before doing so as long as I'm the one holding the winning ticket when it is won.

  You can't predict random.
• Prob988

  

  New Jersey
  United States
  Member #21,205
  September 4, 2005
  963 Posts
  Offline
  Aug 21, 2009, 6:30 pm

  ▲▼

  The situation is covered by what is known as a poissan distribution, which reflects the fact that the larger the percentage of covered numbers is, the larger the probability that the next ticket purchased will match a previous one purchased.

  Based on previous sales for this drawing, one can show that the most likely outcome is still another rollover.

  However there is a non-zero probability of many other outcomes.

  I follow these statistics quite regularly.   It is very rare, given the huge odds, that the probability of one or more winners exceeds zero winners.

  But suppose this probability were constant at 90%.   The probability of there being 5 rollovers would then only be 0.9^5 or roughly 60%.

  I have, for the record, seen improbable outcomes.   Of course one does not buy a lottery ticket at all if one expects that improbable outcomes do not occur.