Woman wins millions in lottery 4 times!

[Calax]

Seriously Dagon? you're going to refute what a person who's job in life is to teach people math, said about a math problem?

 

You gonna refute an astrophysicist about the stellar parallax of the Magellan clouds too?

[Wrath of Dagon]

I'll refute anyone who's wrong, and I'm not necessarily refuting him, just saying he wasn't asked the relevant question.

[Calax]

Including yourself? From what I can tell from alans email, basically he calculated the chance of one person winning 4 lotteries in 100, ANY person. Why would "anyone in the world" matter over just a single person?

[Wrath of Dagon]

OK, what are your chances of winning the next lottery? Not very good, right? What are the chances of someone in the world winning the lottery? People win somewhere every day, right?

[Deadly_Nightshade]

OK, what are your chances of winning the next lottery? Not very good, right? What are the chances of someone in the world winning the lottery? People win somewhere every day, right?

 

And you've just made another massive flaw (equating the chances of a single person to the chances of an entire group).

 

[Calax]

OK, what are your chances of winning the next lottery? Not very good, right? What are the chances of someone in the world winning the lottery? People win somewhere every day, right?

Not in the contest that said person is entering. That said, he kinda takes that into account in the fact that calculating the odds of one person winning requires calculating their odds against other members in the contest.

 

And to be technical, the chances of SOMEBODY winning are 1.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Calax

[Wrath of Dagon]

Even in that contest, the chances of someone winning (since there are like millions of people playing) are much better than the chances of a specific individual (you) winning. And no, it's possible for no one to win the lottery, so chances are not 1. The chances approach 1 as more and more lotteries are played, but technically never become 1. (Of course, once someone wins, the chance that he won is 1, as I said before).

Edited July 22, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Calax]

Even in that contest, the chances of someone winning (since there are like millions of people playing) are much better than the chances of a specific individual (you) winning. And no, it's possible for no one to win the lottery, so chances are not 1. The chances approach 1 as more and more lotteries are played, but technically never become 1. (Of course, once someone wins, the chance that he won is 1, as I said before).

Odds don't change after the contest is won.

 

I'm thinking more along the lines of the fact that the contest "continues"/carries over until somebody wins, but just keeps accruing more money.

 

And in this case, the chances of somebody else winning don't really matter as each individual has the exact same chance of winning as the person trying to win their third or fourth contest. Basically you're saying "They won't win becuase of the 15,999,999,999/16,000,000,000 chance that somebody else will win" which is basically garbage.

[Amentep]

OK, what are your chances of winning the next lottery? Not very good, right? What are the chances of someone in the world winning the lottery? People win somewhere every day, right?

Not in the contest that said person is entering. That said, he kinda takes that into account in the fact that calculating the odds of one person winning requires calculating their odds against other members in the contest.

 

And to be technical, the chances of SOMEBODY winning are 1.

 

The chances of somebody winning are 1 only if every combination of lottery number has been purchased (otherwise someone would be winning the lottery every time the lottery is done).

 

A smaller scale version of this: Lets say out of a deck of cards the Ace of Spades is the winning card; you'd need 52 people picking cards to insure a winner.

 

Lets say you have 27 people, then each person has a 1 in 52 chance of being a winner, but there's a 27/52 chance that the winner is actually still in the deck.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Basically you're saying "They won't win becuase of the 15,999,999,999/16,000,000,000 chance that somebody else will win" which is basically garbage.

That's not what I'm saying at all, I don't even know what that means, you're talking gibberish again.

[Calax]

Basically you're saying "They won't win becuase of the 15,999,999,999/16,000,000,000 chance that somebody else will win" which is basically garbage.

That's not what I'm saying at all, I don't even know what that means, you're talking gibberish again.

It means that you're saying that because there are other people in the contest they won't win. Which is BS because the odds calculated for that solitary person winning are the same odds for everyone which would mean that nobody would win ever. You only need to calculate the odds for ONE person winning 4 times, that's it.

[Wrath of Dagon]

No, that's what you're saying I'm saying. I don't know why you insist on arguing about something you clearly know nothing about.

[Amentep]

Even in that contest, the chances of someone winning (since there are like millions of people playing) are much better than the chances of a specific individual (you) winning.

 

If you're saying the chance of "you" winning is worse than the chance of "not you" winning amid players of the lottery than that's true.

 

If you're saying the chance of "you" winning is worse than the chance of "some other person" who bought the same amount of lottery tickets for the same lottery, then that's not true as you each would have the same chance.

 

Or, lets say you are A₁ and all the lottery players in the world are A₂, A₃, A₄....A_n and each person bought one ticket and the odds are calculated that there is a 1/10⁵ chance to win.

 

Then chance of winning is the same for A₁, A₂, A₃, A₄....A_n so the chance of A₁ winning is the same as A_n. So the chance of "you" (A₁) winning is the same as "some other person" (A_n)

 

But the chance of "you" (A₁) winning is much less than the rest of the group (which stands at A_n-1/10⁵ IIRC).

[Walsingham]

Dagon, can we assume for a moment that every single other person on this thread isn't both a retard and a failure at the mathematics many of them are trained in?

 

If you do this, then we will assume you are not a retard either.

 

If this is the case then it is possible we have misunderstood your point. Can you try explaining it clearly and in bullet point form so we can tie this up?

[Amentep]

Dagon, can we assume for a moment that every single other person on this thread isn't both a retard and a failure at the mathematics many of them are trained in?

 

I confess I may very well be a failure at the mathematics I trained in since its been ten years (almost 11) since I did jack-all with it (but I can always impress people with the degree, none the less).

 

I will say that in my previous foray in the thread with WoD, I got the nagging feeling that we're talking at cross purposes; ie he and I (and we in general) are not setting the issue the same way in our minds and thus not finding a common ground to discuss. But I couldn't pinpoint where I think the communication problem lays and without going totally to mathematical notation so we don't get lost in semantics, I'm not sure how to resolve the issue.

[Oblarg]

Guys, Dagon is correct when he says the probability of "a person winning four times" is different than the chance of "this person winning four times." This should be obvious to anyone who has taken statistics.

 

The main issue is that, while this is true, it's also irrelevant. I have explained why earlier in the thread.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Even in that contest, the chances of someone winning (since there are like millions of people playing) are much better than the chances of a specific individual (you) winning.

 

If you're saying the chance of "you" winning is worse than the chance of "not you" winning amid players of the lottery than that's true.

 

Yes, that's what I've been saying for more than 20 pages. I keep making the distinction between a specific individual and someone at all in the entire group, but it just doesn't seem to be getting through. Oblarg is right, except I don't understand why that's irrelevant. But may be it's best not to get into that again.

 

@Wals: My point for this thread was to come up with a solution for how someone could've won the lottery 4 times. I think I showed a while back that the chances of someone winning are not as great as I previously thought, but could plausibly be quite reasonable. If there's some other point I'm missing, please explain what it is.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Oblarg]

Even in that contest, the chances of someone winning (since there are like millions of people playing) are much better than the chances of a specific individual (you) winning.

 

If you're saying the chance of "you" winning is worse than the chance of "not you" winning amid players of the lottery than that's true.

 

Yes, that's what I've been saying for more than 20 pages. I keep making the distinction between a specific individual and someone at all in the entire group, but it just doesn't seem to be getting through. Oblarg is right, except I don't understand why that's irrelevant. But may be it's best not to get into that again.

 

@Wals: My point for this thread was to come up with a solution for how someone could've won the lottery 4 times. I think I showed a while back that the chances of someone winning are not as great as I previously thought, but could plausibly be quite reasonable. If there's some other point I'm missing, please explain what it is.

 

I think the point is that your original assumption that something can be so unlikely that it couldn't possibly happen is absurd because extremely unlikely events happen all the time, especially in the case of lottery winners in which pretty much any outcome can be made arbitrarily unlikely up to the somewhat meaningless point of "the probability of this exact outcome."

Edited July 22, 2010 by Oblarg

[Wrath of Dagon]

Yes, but what I was saying if an event has a 1 in a million chance for all practical purposes it will not occur in a single trial. However, it will almost certainly occur in millions of trials. I understand some people believe it can still occur in a single trial, but I don't, and this thread illustrates that it's useless to argue about.

[Oblarg]

Yes, but what I was saying if an event has a 1 in a million chance for all practical purposes it will not occur in a single trial. However, it will almost certainly occur in millions of trials. I understand some people believe it can still occur in a single trial, but I don't, and this thread illustrates that it's useless to argue about.

 

It can. Anything with a nonzero probability is effectively possible, however unlikely. That's not a question of belief, that's a question of mathematics. You have to remember that the distribution is random - an unlikely event is just as likely to happen on the first attempt than it is on any other.

 

And, beyond that, there are plenty of events that fall into the "drawing a sequence of cards from a deck" model in which something incredibly unlikely happens on the first trial, always, because the only possible outcome is going to be incredibly unlikely if you take the probability of that specific outcome occurring. Yes, that probability is effectively meaningless, but the fact remains that something with that extremely low probability did indeed occur.

 

The important point is that, in this case, the chance of it happening legitimately is negligible compared to the chance of it being fraudulent, which I have been saying from page 1.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Well, I'd like to see an example of something incredibly unlikely happening on the first trial. And we're going back to the same argument. Yes, it's just as likely to happen on the 1st as on the millionth, but it's hugely more unlikely to happen on one specific one (1, 2, 1000000) than it is on any of the million attempts.

 

Edit: Probability is about prediction. I can confidently predict if will not happen in one trial. I can confidently predict it will happen in 100 million trials, but I can not predict on which one.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I understand some people believe it can still occur in a single trial, but I don't...

 

It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of math - and the math does not support your position.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Deadly_Nightshade

[Wrath of Dagon]

Which math is that? The one you just invented?

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Which math is that? The one you just invented?

 

No, unlike your Dagon-Maths

[alanschu]

Again, it's not her chance of winning that matters, it's the chance of someone in the world winning. Also your professor is assuming she's spending 1 dollar in each lottery, the more correct statement would be she spend a total of $100 playing, not that she's played 100 times, but that's a relatively minor point.

 

My professor did not assume she is only spending 1 dollar in each lottery. He said that she played 100 times (i.e. played in 100 different lotteries). The probability, which he states we don't have enough information to determine, is going to be directly affected by how much she spends per lottery drawing. We don't know this value, but we assumed a constant probability because it'd be a nightmare to calculate otherwise.

 

I don't see how "the more correct statement would be she spend a total of $100 playing" has to do with anything given the formula stated, to be honest.

 

 

Also the probability of an event that already occurred is 1, either you misunderstood each other, or he doesn't know what he's talking about there.

 

I'll defer to the individuals that have received philosophical doctorates in the field. It's my impression that your statement is changing what we are discussing the probability of.