Hey Bill Nye, Is Playing the Lottery Rational?

This week, Bill Nye the Science Guy talks about the chances of winning the lottery, and re-frames the system as a tax on the people who can least afford it.



Bill Nye:

If people wanted to play the lottery, okay, that’ll be fun for them. The chances of winning are very, very small – extraordinarily small. Almost everyone who ever plays, ever, loses. And I used to think it was benign or not any big deal, but I have changed my mind about that over the last 30 years. The lottery is mostly a tax on people who don’t know math. And the reason they don’t know math is because people like me have failed to enlighten people on what it really means when it’s one in 230 million. It means you will lose. That’s what it means. If you have a one in 230 million chance of winning it means you will lose. And when I was doing standup comedy I used to have a joke – a joke – about having a revolver, a gun, where the bullets are arranged in a circle.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Is Playing the Lottery Rational?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Video by Big Think, 2016