Here’s An Obligatory List of 11 Things More Likely Than You Winning the Mega Millions Jackpot

Everybody loves money, but you know what everybody loves even more than money? Statistics. OK, maybe that’s just me. In any event, tonight there is going to be a drawing for the largest Mega Millions Jackpot — the largest lottery jackpot in general — in history. It’s reported, at the time of this writing, to be a whopping $640 million dollars, or roughly the net worth of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. You can win your own Facebook co-founder(‘s net worth). Of course, your chances of winning are minuscule, a nice 1 to 175,711,536 or a .000000005% chance. But what fun is knowing that if you can’t put it into perspective against a bunch of wacky things? Every self-respecting blog should have a list; here’s ours.

For the sake of argument, just imagine that personal choice doesn’t exist. All these stats are based on nothing but your existence as a citizen of the country, world, universe.

The bad news: Winning the lotto is unlikely.

• You are 305 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to win the lotto.¹
• You are 207 times more likely to get dealt a royal flush.²
• You are 7 times more likely to be dealt a royal flush, bet the winnings on 00 in roulette, and win.³
• You are 10,336 times more likely to be born albino.⁴
• You are 24 times more likely to be executed in the U.S. ⁵
• And 3 times more likely to be put on death row and then exonerated. ⁵
• You are 1,004,065 times more likely to be audited by the IRS.¹
• You are 3,514,230 times more likely to be smart enough to be in Mensa.⁷
• If you’re on Twitter, you’re 7,028,461 times more likely to be following Lady Gaga (1 in 25).¹⁰
• But only 21,920 times more likely to be following Geekosystem.
• And a mere 57 times more likely to be following me.

The unremarkable news

• You are exactly as likely to win the lotto as you are to win the lotto.^duh

The good news: Other things are significantly more unlikely.

• You are 1,888 times more likely to win the lotto than you are to be struck by lightning twice.¹
• You are 119,514 times more likely to win the lotto than you are to be hit by falling space debris.⁸
• You are 52,358,542,924 times more likely to win the lotto than you are to stumble upon a perfect bracket by random chance.⁹
• And lastly, you are 38,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more likely to win the lotto than you are to experience quantum tunneling.⁶

The obvious news

• You have a zero percent chance of winning the lotto if you don’t play.^duh
• You also stand a zero percent chance of winning the lotto if you have yet to be born, or are dead.^{I’m trying to be funny}

To any and all of you that have bought tickets out there, best of luck to you and may your every delusion come true.

Sources

1. Funny2
2. Wikipedia: Poker
3. Wikipedia: Roulette
4. Wikipedia: Albinism
5. Death Penalty Information Center
6. Physlink
7. IQ Basics
8. Huffington Post
9. CBS
10. Twopcharts

Relevant to your interests

• LOST fans win the lotto