Type:
Category:
Volume:
4(2)
Pages:
7-Apr
Year:
1997
Publisher:
Spreadsheet User
Abstract:
Spreadsheets are used to explore the lottery, addressing common misconceptions about various lottery "strategies" and probabilities and providing real-world applications of topics such as discrete probability distributions, combinatorics, sampling, simulation and expected value. Additional pedagogical issues are also discussed. Examples discussed include the probability that an integer appearing in consecutive drawings, the probability that a single 6-ball drawing includes at least two consecutive integers, the probability that exactly one person wins the jackpot, and the probability that a frequent player eventually wins the jackpot.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education