Understanding odds. Winning the lottery

6,399,818 dollars.
Late one evening in 1993 Judy purchased 20 dollars for a ticket at 7.11 in Richmond. That night when the number came in Judy and her husband Frank were the only winners.
To win Judy had to match 6 out of 6 numbers between 1 and 44. That may sound easy enough but when you consider all the possible sets of numbers changing just one number at a time. You find 7 million 59 thousand and 52 different combinations.
The odds against winning them are 7 million 59 thousand and 51 to one.
Frank and Judy beat the odds. Over 5 years before they won they purchased maybe 2 or 3 thousand dollars worth of tickets wherever they could afford to lose that wig.
I’ve been telling her you never win the lottery unless you have a ticket in your pocket.

Ron Howard.
Someone might buy a lottery ticket which has a very poor chance of paying off and he might win. Well, that would be a bad decision with a good outcome.
Ron Howard is a professional decision theorist. He helps people and corporations learn how to make better decisions.
The fundamental distinction that you have to make is between the quality of the decision and the quality of the outcome and the consequences that follow from it.

By buying 20 tickets Judy try to improve her odds of winning even though she won, buying a lot of tickets didn’t help much.
Buy one ticket in seven million chances and you have a 99. 99999 % chance of losing.
Buy 20 your chance of losing is 99.99972% at a dollar each you would have to buy 3 and a half million different tickets to have almost a 5050 chance of winning.
The numbers are just too big to carry them in your mind. So instead of figuring the odds people trust in luck.