Monday 15 February 2010

D'oh

Just reading blogging chum Manuel's latest entry about his failure to win the lottery, and have realised that I am very, very stupid.

The Boss and myself have been playing the national lottery for a couple of years. Yes yes, I'm aware that it's a tax on people who are bad at maths and so on; I wouldn't bother but it's something mildly entertaining to do in work, ok? And anyway, on the off-chance I became a multi-millionaire, I'd probably rather like it. To hell with these people who say "Ah, but you'd be bored" or "You wouldn't know how to spend it" - they seriously lack imagination.

Anyway, in two years or so, we have not won. Not once. Not anything. Not so much as the bare minimum three numbers that nets you a tenner. And now my mind turns to this, and I think : this is, at this stage, in defiance of the law of averages. Every week, we play. And never have we won anything. Most people will win the bare-minimum-keep-you-playing-tenner one time in ten tries, maybe. A couple of hundred goes, and nothing.

Each Monday, when we remember, we check the results, which is to say, I look them up online, and shout them across to The Boss, who checks them against the ticket, and invariably announces that we have failed yet again. It is a brief moment of camaraderie in the office, as week after week we continue to be statistic-buggeringly unlucky.

I've only just realised the major logical flaw in this whole operation.

D'oh.

24 comments:

  1. Arse. You've probably won about 20 times.

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  2. The largest amount of money I've removed from the National Lottery in one hit was £175, but I've had about 25x £10 wins. I wouldn't like to calculate what that package has cost me though. :-)

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  3. I mean, like, nothing? Two lines a week for two years and nothing? Bah. BAH!

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  4. Well, you can't have won that much, as TB is still around. But two years of playing? Yes, she's definitely been keeping money from you. You'd better confront her.

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  5. No no, I suspect no dishonesty. The Boss, whatever else she may be, is a fundamentally honest person in that sort of way; I honestly would not doubt her for a second in that respect. In terms of ticking off the right numbers as I shout out the results... hmmm...

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  6. yup....one day she is gonna just disappear....

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  7. Well it's still sort of a win for me either way...

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  8. I used to play the odd week, won tenners a few times! was fun picking them up with the morning papers for the coffeeshop :)
    But yes, for all you know, you could have been a millionaire by now if she hadn't held onto the tickets :/

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  9. Ha... ha... HA HA HA HA.

    Oh bugger eh?
    Thanks SK, this post has been the bright spot of my day!

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  10. "Most people will win the bare-minimum-keep-you-playing-tenner one time in ten tries"

    I doubt that. If the majority of people won a tenner for every tenner they spent on tickets, there wouldn't be much left over for the jackpot or good causes, would there?

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  11. You could always check your numbers if you do the same every week? http://idefex.net/b3talottery/ searches the database of all draws and tells you if you won and when. Although you might not want to know...

    Keep up the good work SK!

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  12. That Bloke in the Corner16 February 2010 at 13:03

    Just a thought SK, if you did win the millions would you have to share with the boss? (this is all depending that she has stopped singing and is ticking off the right numbers on the ticket, and that she is looking at a ticket and not a till receipt from Sainsburys).

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  13. The odds of winning a tenner are about 54 to 1 (yes, they really are that bad...), so while you should get one win a year (assuming you only play once a week), it's entirely feasible that you won't win anything over the course of a couple of years.

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  14. Look on the bight side, if you have won, the winning thicket is just over there next to the bin.

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  15. You're 56.7-1 to win a tenner. The odds of winning a prize of any size are 54-1. As Anonymous says, you're a long, long way from an unusual streak.

    More importantly, I hadn't checked the blog this year before today, and did a little dance when I saw you'd been posting again. Because this is, straight up and down, the funniest site on the internet.

    You suffer for our entertainment. We are grateful.

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  16. @ Anon : You are absolutely correct in your assessment of my failure of the statistics involved. I stand corrected.

    @ Anon & everyone else : I checked the results. In fact we have won nothing, and are just unlucky bastards. But hey, it was a story to tell.

    @ That Bloke : Yes, of course. The Boss, in discussion, has already stated that she would continue working because otherwise you'd just get bored. I have of course told her that this is crazy talk and that in the event of having fifty mil, you will not see me for fucking dust, and I will never, ever, never again be bored.

    @ Dermoth/Curious Character/everyone : Heartfelt thanks. It amuses me and kind of blows my mind that a few months ago I wrote an entry to the effect of "I see I now have 8 followers... wow..." - the Evil Analytics tell me we're now getting about a thousand unique visitors daily round here, which is kind of fucking mind-blowing; I'm glad I drink quite heavily otherwise I'd be intimidated to post at all at this stage ;)

    @ Gavin : true. The Bin knows too much....

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  17. You could always just buy the tickets online and the nice people will send you an email to tell you that you have won. Elimination of Boss to Ticket Error. Voila

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  18. Ignore Anonymous - If you buy your tickets online anything you win will go straight to the hackers.

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  19. Koala, with all these followers aren't you worried (just a teenie tiny bit) that the Boss will discover that she is an unwitting actor in an internet soap opera?

    What do you imagine her/the companies reaction would be if they found out?

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  20. I get the occasional dose of the Fear over this, but it's probably not very likely; the vast majority of said followers are in the US, and there aren't that many hits from this country at all, really, and enough white lies have been told herein to confuse and obfuscate any attempt to locate me, was anyone mad enough to want to. Anyway, TB doesn't exactly spend her evenings on the net reading blogs, I imagine.

    But yes, still enough to give me the cold shits every so often, and certainly I can't imagine such a scenario ending well for me, no; at some point if the fear overwhelms me I'll just delete the whole thing, I guess, but until then I'll just live with the creeping paranoia...

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  21. Creeping paranoia meh.

    Think of it as adding spice to your curry. Being an Irish native I'm sure chicken tikka masala is a dish of choice. *Looks at Manuel the waiter*

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  22. I do really hope that whenever you escape this comedy hell, and have an amazing and fulfilling job somewhere with free erasers every day, unhacked photocopiers and all the eucalyptus leaves you can eat, you will forward the link for this blog to TB, perhaps cc'ing in the CEO..?

    Also - I would like it to be noted that everytime I check in here to break up my boring hideous day and there is no new blog, I die a bit inside... No pressure...

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  23. Just a general comment, I used to be all snooty about the lottery, but then I lived in an area where some fantastic regeneration had been funded by the lottery, making a nature walk where the local kids would otherwise have had nothing but concrete.

    So, now I feel okay about it (it would have been worth £1 a week just to have that walk) and I get to have the odd daydream of "if..." which dream of escape is actually also worth the modest fee!

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  24. I am a local follower (Whitehead) - keep up the great blogs love it!

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