Betting the Lottery

The best way to bet the lottery is by not too. If you do, and if you keep track, you will eventually become convinced that you shouldn't bet the lottery for real at all. Why? Because you simply cannot guess the winning numbers often enough. Sound familiar? * "If I do win, the payoff will be a lot more than what I've spent." * "Someone has to win." If you use these rationales or any others to …

…the result is, it'll be expressed in terms of a change in the loss, not a change in the profit. And because the answer, 300%, is a positive number, we know it's an increase, not a decrease. In this case it's a 300% increase in loss. Finally, the case of going from a profit of $100 to a loss of $25. The formula results in -500%, which means, as if you didn't know by now, a 500% decrease in profit