Helen's Oz Lotto Everything Sharing Space.

If you do not play you cannot win, right? So take a shot at winning the lottery. Unfortunately, your odds of winning the lottery are approximately the same whether you play or not. How can that be? It is true that your odds of winning are zero if you do not play, but your odds of winning are approximately zero if you do buy a ticket. The key to this puzzle is the concept of accuracy in calculations.

The final result of a series of calculations can only be as accurate as the least accurate entry. This concept is known as significant figures. For example, the plain number 4 has one significant figure. The number 4.0, on the other hand, has two significant figures. And 4.03 has three significant figures. Likewise, 0 has one significant figure, while 0.0 has two significant figures.

If the odds of winning the big prize in a lotto game are one in ten million, how do we express this in terms of significant figures? With an accuracy of one significant figure, your chance of winning is zero. Likewise, to two significant figures, your chance is zero. We have to go all the way to eight significant figures to register a chance of winning higher than zero.

Lotteries are generally designed as games to entrap those who are math-challenged, and are unwilling or unable to figure the real odds. The payout (which is the percentage of money bet that is returned as winnings, large and small) is almost never higher than 50%. Las Vegas slot machines have a payout of around 93%. At the blackjack table, if you pay attention and know how to handle the many different card combinations properly, the house has only a slight edge.

If you want to gamble, fine. Go to Vegas and play blackjack or video poker. Go to the dog track or bet on a horse race. Learn everything you can about football and keep up with every snippet of news about players and coaches. Then place a bet on the team you believe will win. If you are going to bet on the team you like, rather than the better team, you might as well just play the lottery.

There is always poker, which is not exactly a game of chance. Poker is a game of skill, with some against-the-odds occurrences thrown in. If you have a four, five, six, and eight of hearts, is it possible to draw the seven of hearts for a straight flush? Yes, it is. If the only cards you know about are the ones in your hand, that means there are 48 cards outstanding, and one of them is the seven of hearts. If you are at a table where you have seen some of the other cards dealt, you must change your calculation of the odds according to those cards which you have already seen. If somebody else had the seven of hearts, your chance of drawing it is zero. If you are going to play poker successfully, you must be able to figure the odds of winning and compare that to the amount at risk. You must also watch how the other players handle various situations. If you cannot do these things, you can still play, and you will occasionally have the best cards at the table for an extended per iod, in which case you will win.

Buy lotto tickets if you want to. Pick your numbers and play the same ones every time or let the machine choose them randomly. It makes no difference because every combination is exactly as likely to come up as every other combination. It is your money, so do what you like with it. But understand that the odds of winning the big prize are approximately the same whether you play or not.

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由 Blogger 於 6/24/2012 02:37:00 上午 張貼在 About Oz Lotto Instructions Everything.