Rollover/Number of Winner Probabilities for a 600M annuity jackpot.Prev TopicNext Topic

• Prob988

  

  New Jersey
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  September 4, 2005
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  May 17, 2013, 4:25 pm

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  The Powerball now has an annuity jackpot of 600M, with a cash value of 377M, which suggests that the lottery expects to sell 457.4M dollars worth of tickets, with half that number being the actual tickets sold on this drawing.

  The randomized Poisson probabilities for numbers of winners at this sales level, with 0 representing a rollover is as follows:

  k,   number of winners	p(m,k)
  0	27.11%
  1	35.39%
  2	23.09%
  3	10.05%
  4	3.28%
  5	0.86%
  6	0.19%
  7	0.03%
  8	0.01%

   The pretax expectation value is 0.93.

  There is still a small but shrinking chance of yet another rollover, but the most probable single outcome is a single winner, although a number of winners greater than one is actually a higher probability in sum.
• Toronto

  

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  November 29, 2012
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  May 17, 2013, 4:32 pm

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  Based on empirical data, your projected sales is off. $563,131,974 + $26,218,974 from Powerplay was the sales from the November drawing and that was less than this PB jackpot

  Mega in 2012 was $651,915,940 for their $600M+ drawing
• Prob988

  

  New Jersey
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  May 17, 2013, 5:17 pm

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  In response to Toronto

  Quote: Originally posted by Toronto on May 17, 2013

  Based on empirical data, your projected sales is off. $563,131,974 + $26,218,974 from Powerplay was the sales from the November drawing and that was less than this PB jackpot

  Mega in 2012 was $651,915,940 for their $600M+ drawing

  Powerplay does not enter into the jackpot calculation and is irrelevant to the Poisson calculation.

  The sales calculation is based on the advertised cash values of this, and the previous draw, and is obviously an approximation, since the lottery often underestimates the sales.

   

  Powerplay, which is always a bad bet when one measures the expectation value, applies to lower level prizes only, and does not affect the probability of winners of jackpot prizes..
• ressuccess

  

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  June 23, 2010
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  May 23, 2013, 4:36 pm

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  Someone in Florida won the Powerball Jackpot estimated at $590.5 million.