贏取彩票的必勝法| 科學60秒

撰文/播音 史蒂夫·米爾斯基(Steve Mirsky)

翻譯 Meatle

審校 喬虹

There』s a story in the book, a story about people who took advantage of the law of inevitability to win the lottery.」 That』s mathematician David Hand, talking about his 2014 book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles and Rare Events Happen Every Day. The law of inevitability comes into play in lottery drawings—some set of numbers will be drawn, so a potential winning combination is inevitable. The key word being potential, as nobody has yet won the multi-state Powerball lottery. Which means that the jackpot for the next drawing, the night of January 13th, is up to some $1.3 billion. You could buy a ticket and hope. Or, as you may have mused, you could buy every possible set of numbers to inevitably win.

「在我的書中有個故事，講的是一群人利用必然性法則贏得了樂透。」數學家大衛·漢德，談到了他2014年的書《不可能原理：為什麼巧合、奇蹟和罕見事件每天都在發生》。彩票開獎體現了必然性法則——某種數字組合將會被開出，因此一個潛在的中獎數字組合是必然存在的。這裡的關鍵詞是潛在的，因為到現在都沒人贏得跨州的強力球樂透。這就意味着，在1月13日晚上開出的頭獎，將會達到13億美元。你可以只買一發，然後靜候佳音。或者，你可能暗自思考過，乾脆買下所有的數字組合，這樣就必定會獲得大獎。

「1992, Virginia State Lottery, the Virginia State Lottery is a 6/44 lottery, you have to choose six numbers out of 44, which means it』s a 1 in 7 million chance that a particular ticket will be the jackpot-winning ticket. Seven million. So if you bought all the tickets it would only cost you $7 million. So they waited until the rollover jackpot had built up to, hadn』t been won, so it built up over several weeks to $27 million. If you manage to spend $7 million and buy all the 7 million tickets you are guaranteed to hold the jackpot winning ticket. But there』s a lot of organization involved in this. In fact, what happened was they put together a consortium of 2,500 people, each of whom paid $3,000 or thereabouts, so they had $7 million. And then in the few days』 window they had available they ran around buying—trying to buy all the 7 million tickets.」

「1992年弗吉尼亞州的樂透，要從44個數字中選出6個數字作為獲勝號碼，這意味着任意一個數字組合贏得頭獎的概率是七百萬分之一。七百萬，所以如果你買下所有的數字組合將只會花掉7 000 000美元。因此他們保持觀望，直至頭獎翻番。幾周後，由於沒有人中獎，獎金累積到27 000 000美元。如果你能花掉七百萬美元去買七百萬張彩票，你能保證自己持有贏得頭獎的那一張。受到巨額獎金的吸引，有很多組織和團伙參與到了這次開獎。實際情況是，他們組織了一個有2 500人的暴力破解彩票財團，每人支付大約3 000美元，從而湊齊了七百萬美元的資金。同時，在幾天的時間中，他們需要四下買彩票，儘可能地買完七百萬種可能的組合。」

Trying to buy. Because the consortium only managed to buy 5 million tickets. So winning was not inevitable, their chances were only five out of seven.

但也只是試圖去買完所有的組合，到頭來，這個團伙只買到了五百萬張彩票。因此這不是必勝的狀況，他們只有七分之五的機會拿到頭獎。

「As it happened, however, they did have the winning ticket, so they were guaranteed winning the jackpot. The organization beforehand, the logistics of running around trying to buy these tickets, the nail-biting looking through the tickets, it』s easier just to get a job.」

「儘管如此，他們確實弄到了那張中獎彩票，因此這些傢伙確實贏了頭獎。可是，如此費盡心機的組織，四處走動購買彩票消耗的後勤資源，等待開獎時的焦慮不安，才弄到這麼點兒錢，還不如去找份工作。」

So if you』re thinking of getting together a consortium for the Powerball, keep in mind that for this lottery there』s only a one in 292 million chance of winning. And tickets are two bucks a pop. So you and your buddies are going to have to come up with almost $600 million to buy every combo and take advantage of the law of inevitability. And if others pick the same winning numbers and you have to split the winnings you could basically break even or even lose money.

因此如果你想為暴力贏取強力球搞個大團伙，請牢記這個彩票的中獎率為2.92億分之一。同時，每張彩票就賣兩美元。因此你和你的弟兄們要籌集差不多六億美元去購買每個可能的數字組合，這樣必然性法則才能保證你獲利。而且，如果其他人也中了頭獎，你需要跟他瓜分獎金，甚至造成虧損。

To put the frenzy in perspective, I like to recall the wisdom of statistician Michael Orkin, author of the book What Are the Odds? Chance in Everyday Life. Back in 2001, the Powerball jackpot had reached $295 million and the odds back then were better, only 175 million to one. Orkin told me, 「if you have to drive 10 miles to buy a Powerball ticket, you』re 16 times more likely to get killed in a car crash on your way than you are to win.」 So if you』re dead set on buying a lottery ticket, at least walk.

為了將瘋狂的想法放到一邊，我喜歡回想《何謂概率：生活中的機遇》的作者，統計學家邁克爾·奧爾金的金玉良言。2001年那時候，強力球的頭獎達到了2.95億美元，而當時中獎的概率要更大，達到了1.75億分之一。奧爾金和我分享了一些人生經驗：「如果你需要驅車10英里去買一張強力球，你死於交通事故的概率將是贏的獎金的16倍。」因此如果你執意於購買彩票，至少應該走路去買。

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