[quote=sdduuuude]Considering multiple winners of the same prize is important. When the prize gets bigger, more people play. If the number of people playing doubles, it effectively cuts your expected winnings in half.
Even using the 1/176,000,000 figure, you have to include the probability of sharing the prize in your expected value calculation or it’s a bad calculation.
If your expected value was positive, those running it wouldn’t be able to make any money, now would they ?[/quote]
The expected value over time is not positive. It is considerably less than 1 (something like .4 or .5 since half the income from lotteries are paid out in prizes_). However, the expected value for any given drawing, may occasionally be positive on rare occasions.
