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Does buying a Mega Millions ticket for a chance for $1.6 billion make any logical sense?

Asked by noitall (159points) October 22nd, 2018

Let’s suppose for the moment we totally disregard any emotional satisfaction one may receive from buying a single Mega Millions ticket for this Tuesday’s (10/23/2018) drawing when the jackpot is this enormous. Then for the manifestly INFINITESIMAL chance of winning the jackpot, when the prize this time is over 1.6 billion dollars(!), can putting down ones relatively paltry $2 make any LOGICAL sense (even though the odds are so tremendously high against winning), just because the jackpot this time around is so very high? (In fact, as I understand it, as high as a lottery jackpot has ever been.) That is, can the very high amount, itself, of this jackpot make playing the lottery (at least this one time only) an actually LOGICAL decision? (Please remember: For the purpose of this question we are disregarding any emotional value one might receive by participating!)

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