I’m proud of my lottery playing record. I’ve spent zero dollars and won three thanks to receiving a scratch-off as a prize. There are no plans to wreck this records because the odds of winning anything in the lottery aren’t that great, as I try (in vain) to explain to my lottery-playing dad, who insists that he’s going to strike it rich one day. He even asks me to help him pick lottery numbers because, after all, I have a math degree so I should be able to come up with a formula for winning lottery numbers. Perfectly logical, right?
Or he could just wish he were Joan Ginther, who has won multimillion lotteries four times. If those were the only four lottery tickets she has bought, the odds of doing that are 1 in 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 24 zeroes or 18 septillion). At least the odds for winning the lottery once are smaller, although still very unlikely. I’ll keep trying to get a job, thanks.