Lottery Tickets -- Forget the "Scandal"

A story today, see below, describes a lottery vendor in Northern Ontario who claimed 160 prizes totalling more than $1 million in just nine years. That does seem pretty darn fishy -- granted, random odds tend to turn up counterintuitive results but ... .

Anyway, the Opposition is calling out for yet another investigation and, specifically, the NDP "warned that people will start to lose faith in the lottery system if the people who sell the tickets are seen to have an unfair advantage over everyone else."

My problem with that concept is that people ought not to have any faith in the system anyway!

Not because the system is corrupt -- my sense is the system is generally fair (with a few problems) -- but rather because the odds are so long you might as well burn your money if you are looking to win.

Specifically, your odds of becoming a millionaire are approximately 1 in 14 million.

That's like pretty long odds. So long, in fact, that you are more likely to:

• Be killed in a terrorist attack while travelling (1 in 650,000).
• Die - during an average lifetime - of flesh-eating disease (1 in one million).
• Be killed by lightning (1 in 56,439).

You are three times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident driving 16 kilometres to buy your ticket than winning the jackpot.

So, if you want (or need) money don't buy a lottery ticket -- if you want a little fun, and social networking through an office pool, and perhaps doing a good work or two, go ahead and buy a ticket. But don't bet on winning!

CBC story here:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080729/national/lottery_insider_wins