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Comment by MrFoof | Hacker News Reader

The odds are beyond terrible, but they are exactly zero if you don't play.

My minimum required jackpot for me to play is a $320,000,000 jackpot. I increase the minimum every year. Keeps my maximum spending to about $4 or $6 a year, which is worth it for the entertaining daydreaming it provides.

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In fact the return is 100% if you don't play.

Usually "returns" are measured as profit over invested amount so it would be 0%.

$0/$0

The return is undefined actually.

I thought that was infinity? Ah, but that would cause problems.

It depends on which 0 is bigger.

This concerns real things, not mathematical approximations. So, we divide 0 dollar over 0 people, that means 0 people get 0 dollar. The answer is clearly 0.

But _each_ person, of which there aren't any, gets an undefined amount.

> The answer is clearly 0.

No, because there are no people to get 0 dollars; the concept of "each" makes no sense when there are no eachees. The answer is clearly undefined.

1/0 is inf, 1/-0 is -inf, 0/0 is undefined

In that case, you should be playing right after a jackpot is paid out. Your chances of winning are the same, but the chances of splitting a jackpot go way down because there are fewer people playing. Sure, you'll have to suffer with only a $40 million payout, but it's still nice.

Meh. I'd rather take my chances waiting for a winner and then sueing the crap out of them. Seems like much better odds.

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