How about this for a Christmas present? Tonight’s Powerball drawing is $333 million.
We’ve all heard the odds are 1 out of 292,201, 338. But this is such a huge number it’s hard to wrap our minds around it.
So let’s look at this a different way. I’m going to bring in two football fields. That’s 100 yards of grass times two. Now, I’m going to bring in one blade of grass and paint it red. You see the contrast? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to plant it around the 40-yard line of field one. Now, here is where you come in. I’m going to blindfold you. No wait, I don’t really need to blindfold you. I’m going to ask you to walk out onto the field of your choice and pick one blade of red grass. That is what 292 million to 1 odds look like.
Let’s compare that to a 20% chance of rain. Here you have ten blades of grass and if you pick one of the two red ones you get rain. This puts a totally different perspective on the chance of rain this week. If I had a nickel for every time someone told me, “you said it wouldn’t rain today, with the forecast being 20%, I’d have 333 million dollars.
Dr. Burrell Montz of East Carolina University said, “If people understood probability, they wouldn’t buy lottery tickets.”
In fact, you have a lot better chance of getting struck by lightning… twice! The odds are one in 19 million.
Your odds of getting attacked by a shark in the ocean is one in 5 million.
And your chances of becoming President of the United States is one in 32.6 million.
