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Old 12-17-2002, 08:28 AM
BruceZ BruceZ is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 1,636
Default I get a different payout

I get that the expected payout per ticket for the grand prize alone is $1.04, but when the other prizes are added, the expected payout comes to $1.21.

Using your numbers (which I confirmed to be correct) the grand prize alone would be worth:

160 million*(.6079 + .3026/2 + .0753/3) = 125,488,000

125,488,000/120,526,770 = $1.04

The EV for getting the power ball + n white balls is:

prize*(1/42)*C(5,n)*C(48,5-n)/C(53,5)

The EV for getting just n white balls with no power ball is:

prize*(41/42)*C(5,n)*C(48,n)/C(53,5)

Here are the EVs with the power ball:
<pre><font class="small">code:</font><hr>
prize ev white balls w/power ball
3 0.042620507 0
4 0.032288263 1
7 0.010045237 2
100 0.009358917 3
5000 0.009956294 4
125482281.6 1.041115444 5
</pre><hr>
Here are the EVs without the power ball:
<pre><font class="small">code:</font><hr>
prize ev white balls w/no power ball
7 0.026860091 3
100 0.008164161 4
100000 0.034017339 5

</pre><hr>
Sum of all EVs = 1.214426

As a sanity check, I also included the 3 cases where we lose a dollar, and subtracted a dollar from all the prizes since we don't get that back when we win. This came out to an EV of 21 cents for buying a ticket, which is consistent with the above.
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