How do you work out what are the chances of anyone winning the lottery any week?

There are plenty of websites that calculate odds. Obviously there will be more “winners” in the smaller categories of a couple of bucks.

It’s luck o’ the draw, and for the vast majority the odds of winning the mega jackpot are about the same as being attacked by a mountain lion while simultaneously being struck by ligthening. lol

I think you have too many variables. You said 4 million people are playing, but you don’t know:
A) how many tickets those 4 million people buy
B) how many unique number combinations those 4 million people buy.

If all four million people buy the exact same sequence of numbers (by ridiculous coincidence), the odds of “anyone winning” are obviously much lower than if all four million people buy four million different sequences.

Without that information, the odds aren’t calculable.

@MrItty
Lets assume they all have one, if we can do this assuming we don’t know how many are the same I’d like that but if not lets assume they are all different.

@inunsure one should be able to calculate the likelihood of how many people will buy 2 identical numbers, 3,4… If one assumes they are purchased randomly. You’d have to figure out how many numbers are on each ticket and what the range for each number is (typically its between 1 and 100).

The chances of a winner per drawing is less than 100% because sometimes there is no winner, i.e., the pool of numbers they choose from may include unsold numbers. It’s fairly often, however. The lottery people want everyone to see big winners on a regular basis.

[edit] Sorry, I didn’t read the details. The combinations of 49 things taken 6 at a time are indeed the expression you give, which equals 49*48*47*46*45*44 / 6!. We know that 6! = 120 and the rest is a quick calculation…be right back…83,902,896. Call it 84 million. So for 4 million players there should be about 4/84 = ½1 = 4.8% chance of somebody winning.