HOUGHTON -- As you know, the Powerball jackpot is at $550 million, and the drawing is scheduled for Wednesday night.What are the odds of winning? If you have a ticket for the Powerball drawing, your chance of winning is 1 in 175 million. Even with the long odds, people are playing.
More than 131,000 tickets are being bought every minute across this country. By comparison, the odds of an amateur golfer making a hole in one on a par-3 hole are 1 in 12,500. The odds of being killed by a lightning strike are one in three million.
"To match the five numbers is about a one in five million chance," said Mark Gockenback of the MTU math department. "Of course, you win a million dollars if you do that, but if you also match the Powerball, then you win the big prize, but that decreases the odds to one in 175 million."
Some experts say the odds are pretty much the same when it comes to picking those winning numbers. If you do it yourself or let the machine do it, your odds are about the same.
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