The record-breaking $700 million Powerball jackpot — likely to grow before Saturday’s drawing — is the stuff of dreams, but it all boils down to math.
• Ticket holders have only a 1 in 292.2 million chance of winning. The odds of hitting the jackpot are about the same as your odds of flipping a quarter and getting heads 28 times in a row.
• Your tiny odds of winning are a bit better if you let the computer pick rather than choosing yourself. That’s because when people use birthdates or other favorite figures, they generally choose numbers 31 or below. That ignores the fact that there are 69 numbered balls.
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If you have extra cash and are thinking of buying all possible number combinations, that is allowed, but it wouldn’t be very smart. At $2 a ticket, the strategy would cost about $584 million, and when taxes are subtracted, you’d end up losing money.
And if someone else had the winning numbers, you’d need to split the prize.
