I think people understand the odds are small. However, perhaps they perceive their chances of meaningfully turn around their life in other ways have even smaller odds. i.e. improbable vs actually impossible. At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance.

Secondly, because everyone realizes the chances are small, the real product being sold is Hope. Even the advertisements for the lotteries address this. The thing you're buying is 30 seconds of daydreaming so you can comfortably tackle the rest of the day.

Interesting site. Logic is rather easy, setting you the WEB site to present the results to me is rather hard.

Good idea to show the odds. I wouldn’t be able to remember the name to send to someone

Maybe try shouldIplaythelottery.com

What I love about this is how it demonstrates that the waiting is the most powerful part. That week is where a lotto user’s brain does all the work for the lotto corp. The anticipation! The excitement. What if? Oh let’s daydream! Oh the dopamine!

You don’t even have to sell them hope. Just sell them the sensation of hope.

The amount of time I spent watching this page is a nice reminder of why I have a rule to never buy lottery tickets.

See also: Simulation Clicker.

I know how my brain works these days.

So you're telling me there's a chance

I would be really curious to see the money side of this. I am not sure about Powerball, but with EuroJackpot, some of the smaller wins can cover the cost of the ticket (or even cover a holiday!).

It would be really interesting to watch the expected value play out over repeated plays!! I am imagining a running balance where you keep track of total spend versus total returns. Most of the time the balance steadily goes more negative, with occasional jumps back up when you hit a partial match, and very rare big spikes from a larger win.

Very cool project!

The odds of winning are so low that I tell people the odds that they will just give me the money even though I bought no ticket can’t be much lower.

The Company has never existed, and never will.

https://archive.org/download/HeliganSecretsOfTheLostGardens/...

I think for most people, they just think _someone_ will win eventually and you can't win if you don't play, so why not part with some (hopefully) disposable income that could turn their entire life around.

Neat. I like that multiple clients get the same websocket data, as opposed to each just running their own simulation. I will be watching https://lotteryeverysecond.lffl.me/wins with interest. ;)

> Approximately 4.6 years of continuous play, every second, to see a single jackpot win.

This seems pretty reasonable, actually! Somehow it makes the 320M seem manageable.

I think it would be interesting to have a version where the chosen numbers were the same every time. We all know the odds won't change but there are countless people who play the lottery this way. They have "their" numbers and they never deviate for fear that if they do, that's when "their" numbers would pop up and they'd miss out on the win.

I just saw a 57.1% percent match go by.. That sure would have convinced me to buy more tickets.. :-)

A few years ago I wrote a script to compare my numbers against all previous drawings. Still didn’t “win”!

The thing that annoys me most about the lottery is the tradeoff between risk and reward is so dumb as to become actually dangerous. The linked site says the Eurojackpot has a 1 in 139,838,160 chance of a jackpot and a payout of €10,000,000, where for most people a payout of €50k-€250k would be completely life changing and I expect there exist risky bets/gambles/investments which would give you that payout for much better odds.

Not to mention that once your winnings goes over a certain threshold the chance that you end up dead from bad choices or straight up murdered seems to skyrocket.

What people often overlook about lottos is that for a few dollars, you’re buying the chance to dream about a better life.

And that dream lasts right up until you check the numbers.

That’s the part rational investors tend to miss … the power of dreaming.

And I’ll admit it - I play the lottery too, even though I already live a pretty comfortable life.

What would be cool is being able to enter a ticket price, and keep a running count of financials to show how underwater you are on a net basis.

Could also change the cadence for tallying purposes (so 1 second = 1 week/fortnight/month) to keep track of how many weeks, months or years one has been doing this for. But that might get depressing!