What are the odds of winning the UK euromillion lottery?

Coveredinbees!!!!

I get a lottery ticket when I'm feeling down and don't check until Monday to see if I have won. I call it a false hope ticket but I can dream all weekend that I may be loaded.

Bastiat

Just out of curiousity I looked at the mathematical expectation from the odds on the euro-millions website. Looks like it's £1 for a £2 ticket! You'd have better odds in a casino!

Eco_Miser

Bastiat wrote: »

Just out of curiousity I looked at the mathematical expectation from the odds on the euro-millions website. Looks like it's £1 for a £2 ticket! You'd have better odds in a casino!

Yes, but the casino isn't normally raising money for good causes. Look at it as giving half your stake to charity, and doubling your expectation on the other half.

noggin1980

Eco_Miser wrote: »

Yes, but the casino isn't normally raising money for good causes. Look at it as giving half your stake to charity, and doubling your expectation on the other half.

Even taking into account the charity aspect the lottery is significantly worse ev than the casino but there isn't really anyway to win 100mill in the casino either.

bowlhead99

noggin1980 wrote: »

Even taking into account the charity aspect the lottery is significantly worse ev than the casino but there isn't really anyway to win 100mill in the casino either.

Simply think of the retail, Camelot, etc charges as admin fees for raising money for the charity. Some charities have huge expense ratios.

Then the prize pool can be considered 100% payout.

noggin1980

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Simply think of the retail, Camelot, etc charges as admin fees for raising money for the charity. Some charities have huge expense ratios.

Then the prize pool can be considered 100% payout.

Your point is fair but the charity payout is just 56% of the non prize pound and there is probably administration costs amongst those the money is given too.

I think you'd have to consider the money the government takes 24% of the non prize pound as charity for the prize pool to be considered as 100% payout.

bobobalde

If you are under 25, you have more chance of dying in the next 15 minutes than winning the Euromillions Jackpot. I saw that on Numberphile on YouTube. So in theory if you could buy a ticket right up until the draw (I know you can't) - if the draw was at 10pm and you bought a ticket at 9.44pm, you are more likely to be dead by the time of the draw than to actually win it.

bowlhead99

Nice! as you get old it gets worse.
Age 40, chance of dying in next year per ONS national life tables = 0.1549%

divide by 365 = rough chance of dying per day (regular 365 day yr) =0.0004244%
divide by 24 = rough chance of dying per hour = 0.0000177%
divide by 20 = rough chance of dying in next 3 minutes
= 0.0000009%
euromillions main prize chance per ticket = 1 in 116,531,800
= 0.0000009%

Still, jackpot ~£72 million tonight, I'm in




*EDIT
Hmm, lots of data on that spreadsheet.
Age 98 - chance of dying in next year = 32.4675%
Same maths as above:

chance of dying in next second
= 0.0000010%
euromillions main prize chance per ticket
= 0.0000009%
don't buy ticket grandpa

noggin1980

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Nice! as you get old it gets worse.
Age 40, chance of dying in next year per ONS national life tables = 0.1549%

divide by 365 = rough chance of dying per day (regular 365 day yr) =0.0004244%
divide by 24 = rough chance of dying per hour = 0.0000177%
divide by 20 = rough chance of dying in next 3 minutes
= 0.0000009%
euromillions main prize chance per ticket = 1 in 116,531,800
= 0.0000009%

Still, jackpot ~£72 million tonight, I'm in.

I wonder what the odds are of being killed off by the act of winning, heart attack, falling off your chair, running around the house and tripping or falling down the stairs.:D

In the shower this morning I had my little lottery winning fantasy but I tried the Premium bonds version and it wasn't the same at all unfortunatly. I was thinking about ISAs, SIPP's, paying off mortgage rather than boats, villas, vegas, new york apartments, I even thought about whether I'd tell my wife we'd won a million, then I got out the shower and made the mistake of telling her that I might not tell her, now I'm in trouble

Coveredinbees!!!!

That would be my luck, win, run outside and be struck by a freak bolt of lightening. What are the chances????