Our current national mania for the Mega Millions jackpot, projected to hit $1.55 billion by Tuesday’s drawing, would almost certainly excite the scorn of Ambrose Bierce.
A largely forgotten American writer, Bierce was the guy who came up with that oft-quoted line about the lottery being “a tax on people who are bad at math.” His whole brand was acerbic wit, and I guess he was considered to be pretty hilarious by the standards of 1911, but on this particular subject I think Bierce was a jerk.
The vast majority of people plonking down two bucks for a Mega Millions lottery ticket are not statisticians, and yet I bet they know intuitively that they have no realistic chance of winning. Sure, you could tell them that the odds of guessing all six numbers correctly – 1 in 302.6 million – are effectively the same as zero. Grab folks by the hair and explain that they are far more likely…
