What are the odds of winning the UK euromillion lottery?

Hedgehog99

According to a well-known web encyclopaedia, the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 116,531,800, but oooh, wouldn't it be nice? The odds of winning the smallest prize (usually £2-something) is 1/23.

Hedgehog99

The really important thing if you have regular numbers is to remember to play, or, if you forget, don't look up the results! Friend of a friend forgot once, and yes, that was the important "once"!

kidmugsy

I've never played the lottery. Is this a good time to learn how?

le_loup

Me too.
Perhaps we should go to the same classes.
On the other hand ... had I spent the one pound a week since inception, I would now be a lot poorer.
No doubt, someone will work it out for me.

TrustyOven

le_loup wrote: »

On the other hand ... had I spent the one pound a week since inception, I would now be a lot poorer.

Someone planted an idea in your mind to buy lottery, while you were asleep?

JamesCR

MadMat wrote: »

Any 2 out of 45 and 1 out of 44, so (2/45)*(1/44) roughly 0.001% chance, around 1 in a thousand.

Mat

Good point, I forgot it could be any of two for the first one.

marleyboy

Hedgehog99 wrote: »

The really important thing if you have regular numbers is to remember to play, or, if you forget, don't look up the results! Friend of a friend forgot once, and yes, that was the important "once"!

Similar thing happened to me once. After an argument with my then GF, she took a humph and opted not to buy my weekly ticket that evening. Predictably, 5 of my numbers came up.

She never pulled a stunt like that again, but by then it was time to change my numbers.

lijogrg444

probabilty of getting the numbers 0-50 and 1-11

0-50 =>51 numbers

---

prob of getting first number correct 1/51

prob of second number 1/50

..

prob of 5th number 1/47

total prob of getting all 5 numbers

1/51 * 1/50*1/49*1/48*1/47

=3.5475183e-9

prob of getting two stars

(1/11)*(1/10)



so total prob is (1/51 )* (1/50)*(1/49)*(1/48)*(1/47)*(1/11)*(1/10)

so it is

1/31007592000 or One in "31 billion 7 million 592 thousand ":mad:

Chris75

Forget the odds as that is not what it is about. The odds of winning are so small that the actual number really doesn't matter. The idea is that you can afford to loose £1 (or whatever the ticket costs) in the hope of making a fortune.


I have never purchased a lottery ticket but we had builders who did the National Lottery. The spent very frequent (most) coffee breaks discussing what they were going to do when they won and just what they were going to say to their bank managers (not polite). They got real value for their £1. They knew that they weren't going to win but that just didn't matter as they thought that they just possibly could.

noggin1980

lijogrg444 wrote: »

probabilty of getting the numbers 0-50 and 1-11

0-50 =>51 numbers

---

prob of getting first number correct 1/51

prob of second number 1/50

..

prob of 5th number 1/47

total prob of getting all 5 numbers

1/51 * 1/50*1/49*1/48*1/47

=3.5475183e-9

prob of getting two stars

(1/11)*(1/10)



so total prob is (1/51 )* (1/50)*(1/49)*(1/48)*(1/47)*(1/11)*(1/10)

so it is

1/31007592000 or One in "31 billion 7 million 592 thousand ":mad:

it's 116million to one, you've made a few errors such as your chance is not 1/51, it's 5/50, then 4/49, then 3/48, 2/47, 1/46