So you're saying there's a chance...

The Mega Millions Jackpot tomorrow is $363 million.
I've had friends, family and co workers remind me of this fact. Come on, who doesn't dream of ways to spend $363 million?

Sure, everyone knows that the probability of winning the lottery is a long shot. How long, however, you've probably never really thought about.
Your actual odds of winning the lottery depend on where you play, but single state lotteries usually have odds of about 18 million to 1 while multiple state lotteries-like Mega Millions-have odds as high as 120 million to 1.

Of course, if you have ever thought you'd win the lottery, you're not alone. About one out of every three people in the United States think that winning the lottery is the only way to get out of their dead end job and/or the only way they will ever be able to become financially secure in their life. This is actually a frightening statistic when you sit down and consider what the above odds really mean.
While winning the lottery may be something that you want, to show you your chances let's take a look at a number of remote occurrences that you probably wouldn't like to have happen to you - and probably don't think will ever happen to you - but are still much more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery.

How about the classic odds of being struck by lightning. The actual probability of this happening varies from year to year, but as a good estimate, the National Safety Council says between 70 and 120 people a year die in the US by lightning - so let's take 100 as our base. With the US population being approximately 265 million people, that means that the chances of being killed by lightning are roughly 2,650,000 to 1. Not very likely. However you are still 6 to 45 times more likely to die from a lightning strike than you would be to win the lottery.
Now nobody wants to die from flesh eating bacteria, and with odds at about 1 million to 1, the chances that you will die that way are pretty slim. Then again, you are 18 to 120 times more likely to die this way than to win the lottery.

What are the chances that if you're playing golf with a group of four that two of you will get a hole-in-one on the exact same hole? 17 million to 1...yep, they're better than the chances of you winning the lottery.

What about dieing from a snake bite or bee sting? It probably isn't a way that you have imagined that you would leave the earth. You're a whopping 180 to 1,200 times more likely to die from one of these incidents than win the lottery. That's because the probability of dieing from a snake bite or bee sting is about 100,000 to 1.

Now I know that you are not a bad person and you don't imagine finding yourself on death row for a crime you committed anytime soon. Still, it's a lot more likely that you will be legally executed than win the lottery. In fact, you are 30,000% to 200,000% more likely to die in a legal execution than to win the lottery!

If none of the above has convinced you to stop playing the lottery, then it's time to bring out my favorite lottery fact. If you drive 10 miles to purchase your lottery ticket, it's three to twenty times more likely for you to be killed in a car accident along the way than to win the jackpot.

All that said...what are the odds of winning if I don't even buy a ticket?!
You know the line... "You can't win if you don't play."

I just bought 10 tickets.
Wish me luck.