Author: stephenwade

Do Lotteries Exploit the Poor?

Writers claim that lotteries exploit the poor, but how do they know this? Sometimes they show an analysis of lottery sales data, based on locations of retailers. I show that using the zip code as the unit of analysis is a blunder that promotes the least-populated zipcodes to unwarranted significance. Further, the assumption that lottery players buy tickets in the zip code where they live can be as wrong as it is convenient. Many a misleading story has been written on the basis of these two errors! NASPL Insights April 2017

Why Does a Whole Village Win in El Gordo?

I reflect on how the logistics and information technology of 200 years ago (pen and ink, and mules) formed the game. Further, I show how its winning experience and structure support its social aspects. If we want to leverage social networks now in North America, we must find ways that fit our contemporary technologies and social structure. NASPL Insights February 2017

Effects of the January 2016 Record Jackpot on the Outlook for 2017

After January 2016, we saw sales for jackpots in the range $200 to $400 million significantly lower than before. My math models support estimating the effect of these changes on the development of big jackpots in the future. I estimate the likelihood of a jackpot reaching $1 billion in 2017 at about 10%, down from about 17% at the start of 2016. NASPL Insights December 2016

How Many People Play the Lottery?

We are fairly sure that about half the eligible population of the US had a ticket for the record Powerball jackpot of January 2016. But how many people play the lottery on a routine basis, week after week, building up those jackpots that bring in the masses? The answers we get depend on how we ask the question. In NASPL Insights October 2016 I explain some reservations about using survey data to understand where sales are coming from, and illustrate a method I have used to combine survey information with ticket counts to develop a more reliable estimate.

Who You Are is How You Play

Reflecting on what I heard from two different lottery winners, I realized that each played in a way that expressed their big-picture view of the world – and that neither view was compatible with probability theory. But knowing better would not have made anyone happier! Still, lottery professionals need to understand the reality, unintuitive as it may be. NASPL Insights August 2016

How Does Lottery and other Legal Gambling Vary Across States?

I combined data from two sources to get a view of how much the “average citizen” lost in legal gambling, across 41 U.S. jurisdictions. The per capita annual loss to lottery is much more variable than the loss to all legal gambling combined. Lottery thrives in states where other legal gambling is limited (and even in neighbors of those states). Total annual per capita losswhich seldom exceeds $500 per capita annually. The potential for improved lottery yields is likely constrained by this combined limit. All Legal Gambling 2016

Go ahead, call us “the Lotto”…

The Lotto game, developed in the middle of the 20th century, was a big improvement over earlier games, but needed the scale that only government monopolies could at that time provide. Now, state lotteries offer big and small versions of Lotto under a variety of names. When people call us “the Lotto”, they may be recognizing that this is our particular franchise -not a bad thing, I suggest. NASPL Insights April 2016

Outlook for the Big Games in 2016

I used math models to explore how matrix changes in Powerball will likely increase sales (as we all want) and increase year-to-year variability (as nobody wants), and estimated the likelihood of a Powerball jackpot exceeding $1 billion in 2016 at about 17%. A few weeks after this publication appeared, that event did happen. As I remarked to some at the time, same odds as Russian Roulette (just saying). NASPL Insights December 2015