"Norman Wells" wrote
Do you really need to ask?
In your "swap a tenner for a twenty" game, there is never any downside - so there's no question that you'd play it.
But if you put 100 on a lottery, you might lose it all or you might win big. It can go *either* way. See?
"Norman Wells" wrote
You can call it anything you like. Just have some randomness in it!
Dunno. It wasnt a UK lottery. And it probably wasn't a 'company' more a syndicate I just used the term loosely (thats why the ' around company), but I dont really know I am just recalling an article I read, this was at least
5 years ago. Try googling for more details..Maybe they didnt get paid until they handed over the ticket? Maybe they paid the shopkeeper to enter the tickets, he wouldnt be eligible to win but would do well from the comission on sales in any case, he probably didnt normally sell 100k or whatever worth of tickets a week :-).
I have no idea I didnt organise it but perhaps not everyone is as dishonest as you seem to be (judging from your questions), I wont be giving you 20 to put on the lottery :-)
You mean it's a survey which aims to discover the basis (or bases) on which punters would decide whether or not to take part.
One could remortgage the ancestral pile for some bogus purpose such as "home improvement". Then spend the money on your lotteries instead of getting the builders in, or nipping down to B&Q.
It depends on whether the punter considers the "expected return" or just the probability of winning.
Look at it this way: There are two lotteries, in both of which there is a 1 in a million chance of winning a million pounds. In one the tickets cost £2, in the other they cost 50p.
"How much of a stake would you be prepared to risk losing for the
1 in X chance of winning £Y?" is what the punter ought to ask himself.
I seem to remember sales of tickets in the UK being suspended for a big rollover jackpot. One of the theories doing the rounds at that time was that they had been suspended to thwart an attempt to cover all the numbers.
Neb
"Tumbleweed" wrote
Did they not get the stake money upfront, either? [Were they expected to put up the cost of the tickets themselves, before they were paid...?]
"Tumbleweed" wrote
That's a big leap! I was thinking more from the point-of-view of the organisers than from the view of the people getting the tickets. The organisers need to be pretty sure that their system is going to work!
"Tumbleweed" wrote
No worries.
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Not really. More to try to discover if people would answer the two questions differently, and to discuss whether that would truly be rational (on the basis of only buying a few tickets compared to the number required to "cover all bases").
In both lotteries, you have the same chance of winning or losing. In both, if you lose then you lose the same amount. In both, if you win then you get "oodles of cash" (compared to your stake).
Let's imagine changing the rules slightly for these lotteries. What if Lottery1's prize was 999,999 and Lottery2's prize was 1,000,001? Would people say 'No' to Lottery1 because expected payout < 1 per ticket, but 'Yes' to Lottery2 because expected payout > 1 per ticket? There's only 2 difference in the prizes!
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
You're very fortunate if you have an 'ancestral pile' worth that much!
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
I deliberately chose the lotteries that I described so that the chances of winning, for any particular stake, were the same. Your's aren't; you are more likely to win buying 10 of tickets in your second lottery (20 goes at winning) than 10 if tickets in your first (only 5 goes at winning).
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
But is there really much difference between winning (say) 7million or winning 8million, if the odds of winning are the same?
I must say, I'd be quite happy to win (just!) 7million...
Surely, if you're just buying a "few" tickets in a lottery, then the thing that really matters is the chances of whether your life will be changed as a result; winning "oodles of cash" would do that for me, whether it was 999,999 or 1,000,001.
I wouldn't answer the two questions differently.
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