Although in the US, but might be of interest to some - Friday's Mega Millions jackpot is now at $237 million after Tuesday night's drawing went without a top winner. The multi-state Mega Millions lottery game will feature a giant jackpot for New Year's Eve. The lottery game has now gone 14 straight bi-weekly drawings without a jackpot winner. Keep in mind that the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 175,711,536, still its a lot of moola.
How the odds are calculated
The number of ways the first 5 numbers on your lottery ticket can match the 5 White numbers is COMBIN(5,5) = 1. The number of ways your final number can match the Mega number is: COMBIN(1,1) = 1. The product of these is the number of ways you can win the Jackpot: COMBIN(5,5) x COMBIN(1,1) = 1. The probability of success is thus: 1/175,711,536 = 0.00000000569114597006. If you express this as "One chance in ???", you just divide "1" by the 0.00000000569114597006, which yields "One chance in 175,711,536".
Update: (Jan 2, 2011)
No winner yet and the jackpot rolls over to $290 million. By the way, if you win this, 31% goes to the federal and state governments in taxes.
Update 2: (Jan 6, 2011)
Mega Millions lottery jackpot up to $355 million!!!
