lottery
"Hate to tell you, dude, but it's thinking like this that keeps lotteries in business."
OK, consider this:
you play in a lottery with $1,000,000 jackpot ,
10,000,000 tickets x $1 dollar each.
You buy one ticket. The lottery results are out, and you happen to be the 1 out of 10 000 000 lucky bastard who won it. You get yer check and cash it in.
Question : How do you assess the situation?
Answer A) My expected value of return is 1x10^6 / 1x10^7 - 1 , therefore I have just lost $0.90
Answer B) Damn, I can feel $999 999 extra in my pocket!
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Just for the record, I dont play lottery. But I can understand people who do.