It's not crazy to spend $1 on a lottery ticket when Powerball hits $340 million; bought one myself. Sure, the odds against winning are astronomical, but so is the risk-to-reward ratio. I'm not quite sure, though, about the people who go all the way to the West Virginia convenience store where the last big winning ticket was sold, on the theory that lightning might strike twice in the same place. Those people really justify the description of the lottery as a tax on the stupid.
Here's an odds question for you, by the way: If someone has flipped a coin 100 times, and it has come up heads 70 times and tails 30 times, how would you bet that it would come up the next time? 1) Heads, because that's obviously the way things are going. 2) Tails, because, statistically speaking, it's certainly due. 3) Doesn't matter -- the odds on each indvidual toss are 50-50 no matter what the history is. The probability experts would say 3, but I'd go with 1. There is something about the way the person has been tossing the coin -- the angle, the speed, the distance -- making it more likely to come up heads.
And lighting does strike in the same place twice. Happens all the time.
