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Can a Powerball ticket be called an investment when the payoff is above $600 Million?

Asked by LuckyGuy (43697points) January 9th, 2016

For the purpose of this discussion let’s round numbers and ignore taxes.
There is a 1 in 300 million chance of matching all the numbers. A ticket costs $2.
Statistically speaking, if the payout exceeds $600M, ($2×300M) doesn’t it become a positive rate of return? What am I missing?

Of course, we all know lotteries are winners for the organization putting them on and the payout is far below the money taken in.
But when there is no payout, the money is rolled into the payout for the next lottery (no doubt minus some huge fees for the administrators) . A typical payout is $100M so those are obvious losers with terrible rates of return but when the pot gets this high doesn’t the math show a positive rate of return?

I might even buy one.

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