So I decided to buy my first Mega Millions tickets today. My friend Jeff used to always say that the lottery was a tax on people that were bad at math. I guess I just got caught up in all of the excitement of a potential half a billion dollar payday.
The way the Mega Millions works is that you pick 5 numbers between 1 and 56 and then pick a 6th number which is between 1 and 46.
I even downloaded the winning number history and did some research. For whatever its worth, 48 appears way too often as a non-mega number and 36 appears the most as a mega-number. The least drawn mega-number by a fair amount is 28. The sample size is way too small to draw any worthwhile conclusions, but maybe there is a bias for or against those balls for some reason.
I decided that I would pick my 5 numbers and then buy 46 tickets -- 1 with each mega number from 1 to 46. This proved more difficult than I anticipated. I thought that there would be some way to do this without filling in 46 betting slips. For instance, leave the mega number blank or select the "asterisk" or "play all" box. It turns out no such boxes exist and the operator behind the counter at the gas station looked at me liked I was not too bright for asking the question. I started manually filling out my picks from 46 down to 1. Unfortunately, my hand got tired after 11 tickets, so hopefully the mega number is 36 or above.
The odds to win the grand prize with 1 ticket are 175,711,536 to 1. So with 25 tickets between my wife and I, we are approximately 7 million to 1 underdogs. Odds that I call in sick on Monday if I win: 1-9.
