GroundSweeper
Forum Supporter
22 23 26 Mega ball 13
9 18 25 Mega ball 13
2 11 38 Mega ball 13
3 18 30 Mega ball 13
9 18 25 Mega ball 13
2 11 38 Mega ball 13
3 18 30 Mega ball 13
Are you people checking your numbers??? Seriously we're way past due for a winner.
BCD
I know, right?? Here’s a link to a Florida lottery page that calculates the odds for the various prize levels for the Mega Millions drawing:
http://www.flalottery.com/exptkt/megaMillions-Odds2.pdf
Essentially, we’re just trying to do the seventh prize level (match 3 numbers only), assuming a guy puts in enough posts to make the Mega ball irrelevant. At the bottom of page 4 on the link, the odds come out to about 1 in 307! One problem is, the odds jump pretty significantly if you don’t match the mega ball...as high as 1 in 13,800 (prize level 5)...boy, it would suck to finally match 3 numbers, but miss out because of the mega ball/too few posts!!
The trouble comes from the number of folks entering each week...only about 30-40 peeps are making a valid entry each week. Amazing considering how many people visit this forum regularly! I’m not complaining though - that’s great news from the standpoint that once a set a numbers hits, there are pretty nice odds it’ll be yours! But the first 16 weeks, we only had about 60 unique entries (30 guys or so, 2 sets of numbers each)...which means only about a 20% chance of hitting a winner each week. Not great odds, but that still makes us pretty far “overdue” from those first weeks. At the same time, it’s an 80% chance of no one hitting a winner each week...so maybe not a surprise we’re over 4 months in, from that perspective!
Now with 4 entries each, assuming everyone has unique numbers, we’ve got about a 40% chance at a winner each week - shouldn’t be long before someone hits it!
Unfortunately, I’m one of the 60% this week
Edit: Apparently they do hinky math in Florida. All the other web sites I’ve gone to say the odds of matching 3 numbers (no mega ball) is only 1 in 606!!
http://www.megamillions.com/how-to-play
https://www.lotto.net/mega-millions/prizes
http://m.lotteryhub.com/mega%20millions-prizes-and-odds.php
If that’s the case, even with 4 entries, we’ve only got about a 20% chance of a winner each week with current participation...history says we could very well have another 18 weeks ahead!