canada goose Three Math Facts That Every Powerball Player Needs To Know Walter Hickey May 17, 2013, 1:43 PM At the moment, The Powerball jackpot has hit $600 million. This is a huge jump, and what it means is that a lot of people will start to play the lottery. Before diving in to play Canada Goose outlet online , there are three statistical facts you need to know to figure out if it’s how you want to spend your money. Here are the probabilities for winning Powerball, according to their official site: Powerball Let’s see what we can figure out from this. 1. Expected Value So the first thing we want to calculate is the expected value. Let’s say you have four dollar bills of different denominations in a bag. You can’t see them, but I tell you that one is a twenty, two are singles, and one is a five. I’m charging you six bucks to reach in and grab a bank note. Should you play? Well, the probability of drawing any of the four bills is 0.25. There are two singles, so the probability of drawing a single is 0.5. If we multiply the probability and payout of each event, and sum that for all events, we get the expected value of playing the game. Here’s the expected value for the money game. Keep in mind I’m charging you $6 to play: EV = ($20