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tl;dr there are circumstances where the expected value is greater than 1, due to the accumulation of prize money when nobody wins several times in a row.


Thanks for this! I had no idea how you could run a lottery which paid out more on average than it took in.


In aggregate, all lottery runs put together take in more than they pay out. But an individual lottery run might be -EV for the state if the jackpot has grown enough; however, that only happens after no one wins the lottery for weeks on end, at which point the state has run even bigger profits than before. Once someone wins that big jackpot, the state may pay out more than it took in that particular week, but still less than it took in for the several weeks leading up to the jackpot finally being won.




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