You gotta be careful with that stuff—you know, with the dihydrogenmonoxide & carbondioxide poisoning and all.
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Yeah, you might end up in the Emergency Medicine room!!! 
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Buying lottery tickets as a credentialed actuary? Maybe the clerk was asking to see a different credential! 
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We do it with rice too, don’t we?
Sometimes they start as low as 50, others 55 or 60 but it seems every time I want to use it they say 65.
I got an AARP card in the mail yesterday. I threw it out, and am going to pretend that never happened.
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lolwut?
I was my actuarial department’s Powerball Commissioner! It’s a very important job!
And we only bought when the EV was positive… at least ignoring the possibility of multiple jackpot winners which was too messy to calc.
I got one in the mail when I was 39. STBX (who is 3 months younger than me) kept it and would throw it in my face on occasion.
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I was riding my motorcycle years ago, stopped for a drink, got a root beer. Granted, it was in a brown glass bottle. Cop walks over to me, says I can’t drink that outside. I had not made the connection yet, I told him I bought it in the store, why can’t I drink it in the parking lot? No, he says, can’t drink beer in the parking lot.
Thankfully I’m white, I spun the label around for him and he laughed and walked off.
Did you assume uniformly random number picks or account for people picking their birthdays and the distribution of birthdays??
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I’m not quite full retirement age, but I haven’t turned my nose up to the handful of seniors’ discounts I have received.
Obligatory Simpsons vid:
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As I said… too messy to account for it at all. We assumed it was not possible that we’d win any amount other than the advertised estimated jackpot if we hit all the numbers. (And the other prizes are fixed and don’t vary based on the number of winners.)
I PV’d it using some discount rate that we all agreed on and when the calc’d EV was positive we bought. I’m sure the actual EV was lower than I calc’d due to the possibility of splitting the jackpot or the estimated jackpot amount being off, but that’s what we did. Since we never won more than $100, I’m quite sure that we lost money at it, but it was entertainment.
Most do seem to start at 65 and some at 60, which I haven’t hit yet. I have definitely gotten a discount or 2 for over 55. I ordered something from Lenovo a few months ago and got it.
I’m not sure if I have for over 50.
Sounds like a good call there!
I don’t participate. I have thought that if I did, my first 5 numbers would all be above 31 to avoid sharing a prize with someone who picked a date.
In fact, why not pick 61, 62, 63, 64, 65 and 26. It’s easy to compare to the winning numbers and has as good a chance of winning as any other combination.
What does “EV” stand for?