Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/15/maryland-man-thought-he-won-100-with-lottery-ticket-then-10000-but-nope-it-was-even-more.html
…
9 Likes
If I ever win the lottery, I will not be talking about it to the national news media. (Any more than forced to by the lottery people, I imagine you’re required to do a press conference or something…)
17 Likes
Laws vary by state, regarding what you are and aren’t required to do to collect. Some states let you collect essentially anonymously, some don’t. I think some states let you essentially form a corporation to collect it.
11 Likes
I saw some news blurb the other day about a $23million winning ticket that was expiring and had never been cashed in. That kind of story piques my interest a lot more, maybe because it will never be resolved and I can invent all kinds of fictions about what happened.
13 Likes
Wish more of my mistakes were like his.
12 Likes
23 million wouldn’t be my threshold, but I could imagine thinking twice about cashing in a billion dollar ticket.
I want a large enough amount that I never need to worry about money again, but small enough that I wouldn’t need to hire personal security guards, ffs.
9 Likes
So he’ll get a bit more than half of that, which won’t come close to buying a home. Real estate prices have become so hopelessly inflated.
2 Likes
I came to the comments expecting for the inevitable deluge of mathematicians complaining about lotteries. Nothing to be seen? Cmon people! Let’s get some sanctimony going.
1 Like
He said “put down on a new home,” meaning make a down payment. $50k is enough for that, and the down payment is a huge hurdle for a lot of people that could otherwise afford the monthly payments.
13 Likes
What are the odds, right?
11 Likes
You could always collect the winnings, take whatever amount you felt you’d be happy with and give the rest away.
Funny how rarely billionaires do that kind of thing in real life, innit?
9 Likes
4 Likes
I’m not a mathematician, but I did study statistics and still use it for work. Lotteries are sometimes a statistical “good bet.” Odds are very low but payouts are very high, so statistical tools for gambling decision-making like expected value will often signal to bet once the jackpot is high enough.
For example, if the odds are 1 in 100 million to win, the bet is $1, and the jackpot is over $100M, statistics would say to bet. There are a lot of things that make it more complicated - lower prizes and their odds, taxes, whether the payout is a 30 year annuity or a cash prize, etc., but for some of these big jackpot prizes, they are mathmatically advantageous (while still extremely unlikely to pay out).
5 Likes
That simple example seems straightforward if you get to keep the full amount upon winning, but how does the fact that you might have to share the jackpot with one or more other winners factor in?
1 Like
Though that’s also rare, there are strategies to avoid it. For example, a significant number of people use birthdays and anniversaries as their lottery picks, so avoiding the numbers 1-31 significantly reduces the odds of sharing a jackpot.
4 Likes
I’d wear a full coverage horse head if PR is required
3 Likes
It would be just my luck to keep $10 million, give away $990 million, and then realize that the giver, not the receiver, has to pay taxes on gifts.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
