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This is interesting… Joan Ginther from Texas, has won multi-million dollar lottery jackpots four times so far!
- In 1993 she split $11 million.
- In 2006 she won $2 million.
- In 2008 she won $3 million.
- Last month, she won $10 million.
That’s close to $21 million in winnings for Joan! Mathematicians (namely Sandy Norman and Eduardo Duenez) say the chances of winning four multi-million dollar jackpots are as slim as 1 in 18 septillion — that’s
1 in 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!
The interesting thing is that Joan Ginther herself was a professor (she earned her doctorate from Stanford University in 1976) and spent many years teaching math.
You know what they say: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action!
Whenever I’m playing Minesweeper and I need a simple 1 in 2 chance for the last block it does not come. Never come! But a 1 in 18 septillion came!? ¬¬
Well given their very strict restrictions they computed 1 in 18 septillion. In actuality, using everything that’s known, you can get it down to much smaller odds. There is a discussion about this on Reddit.