So the jackpot in the Ohio lottery is around 25 million, and the chance of winning it is one in roughly 14 million, with tickets at 1 dollar a piece. It appears to me that roughly a quarter million tickets are sold each drawing; so, supposing you win, the probability of someone else also winning is 1 - (1 - 1/14e6)^{250000}=2%, which does not significantly reduce the expectation value of a ticket. So, unless I'm making a silly mistake somewhere, buying lottery tickets has positive expected value. (I find this counterintuitive; where are all the economists who should be picking up this free money? But I digress.)
I pointed this out to my wife, and said that it might be worth putting a dollar into it; and she very cogently asked, "Then why not make it 100 dollars?" Why not, indeed! Is there any sensible way of deciding how much to put into an option that has a positive expected value, but very low chance of payoff?
You probably care more about what you'll do with the dollars now that you don't have millions than about what you'd do with every extra dollar, given that you had millions. So expected dollars is not the same as expected value.
So the jackpot in the Ohio lottery is around 25 million, and the chance of winning it is one in roughly 14 million, with tickets at 1 dollar a piece. It appears to me that roughly a quarter million tickets are sold each drawing; so, supposing you win, the probability of someone else also winning is 1 - (1 - 1/14e6)^{250000}=2%, which does not significantly reduce the expectation value of a ticket. So, unless I'm making a silly mistake somewhere, buying lottery tickets has positive expected value. (I find this counterintuitive; where are all the economists who should be picking up this free money? But I digress.)
I pointed this out to my wife, and said that it might be worth putting a dollar into it; and she very cogently asked, "Then why not make it 100 dollars?" Why not, indeed! Is there any sensible way of deciding how much to put into an option that has a positive expected value, but very low chance of payoff?