Beauty, personified

Here’s what I did last night. Go Tar Heels! 

Lottery Challenge: Analysis

Statistical Analysis of the Lottery Challenge
By denominations
$10 — 1 purchased, 0 winners (0%), $10 spent, 0 won
$5 — 7 purchased, 1 winner (14%), $30 spent, $5 won
$3 — 5 purchased, 0 winners (0%), $15 spent, 0 won
$2 — 9 purchased, 3 winners (33%), $18 spent, $13 won
$1 — 22 purchased, 5 winners (23%), $22 spent, $25 won
Total — 44 purchased, 9 winners (20.5%), $100 spent, $43 won

What I have learned:
— Big winners are out there, but more than likely, you are going to lose money. While I was steadily throwing money away, a lady in Sanford won $125,000 on a scratch-off last week. And I myself have won $200 on one ticket. But it doesn’t happen often.
— Never buy a $3 ticket. They are cumbersome, boring, take a long time to play and never pan out.
— A $5 ticket is far less profitable that I had imagined. All my biggest winners have come from $5 tickets, but I seemed to know get any over the last ten days.
— If you have $10 to spend, and want to make at least some back, the best bet is to buy $1 tickets. I should have just bought $100 worth of them. The more you can buy of one ticket, the better, I think. My theory is that the state has a set amount of winners for each ticket, so the more of one denomination you can buy, the better off you will be.
— Though I lost quite a bit of money, I almost double my blog hits for this fiasco, so I at least accomplished that goal.
— What if I had just bought $100 worth of powerball tickets or five raffle tickets? I guess we’ll never know. But the odds of winning at least $100 on Powerball are 1 in 14,254.44. I’m not sure if that is better or not. I am not a mathematician.
— But one thing is certain. I am not doing this again, so it doesn’t matter. I should have just bought a gun and rented some bullets.