Powerball Ticket Sales Question
December 7th, 2014 at 1:43:57 PM
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Hello Wizard,
I have a question related to something you wrote on your Ask The Wizard site:
"Looking at just the 17 drawings since then, using jackpot and sales data from LottoReport.com, I find there is an exponential relationship between jackpot size and demand. I found the same thing for the Powerball lottery, by the way. Using exponential regression, my formula for total tickets sold (in millions) is 12.422 x exp(0.0052 x j), where j is the jackpot size (in millions). For example, for a $636 million jackpot, the expected sales would be 12.422 * exp(0.0052*636) = 339.2 (million). Actual sales were $337 million, so pretty close."
That formula is quite accurate for estimating ticket sales for a given jackpot size.
But can you come up with a formula to estimate the ticket sales for the next drawing, knowing the size of the last jackpot (that was not won)? I can't.
For instance, the largest Powerball jackpot was won on May 13, 2013. According to LottoReport.com, the jackpot size was $551 million with 232 million tickets sold. Let's say the jackpot was not won that day - about how may tickets would be sold for the following drawing?
Given that ticket sales increase over the previous drawing by a growing factor of at least 2 when the jackpots get over $250 million, my guess is that around 800 million tickets would be sold, bringing the jackpot to well over $1 billion dollars. And I believe a jackpot of this magnitude will happen in the next few years.
Many Thanks
Ace
I have a question related to something you wrote on your Ask The Wizard site:
"Looking at just the 17 drawings since then, using jackpot and sales data from LottoReport.com, I find there is an exponential relationship between jackpot size and demand. I found the same thing for the Powerball lottery, by the way. Using exponential regression, my formula for total tickets sold (in millions) is 12.422 x exp(0.0052 x j), where j is the jackpot size (in millions). For example, for a $636 million jackpot, the expected sales would be 12.422 * exp(0.0052*636) = 339.2 (million). Actual sales were $337 million, so pretty close."
That formula is quite accurate for estimating ticket sales for a given jackpot size.
But can you come up with a formula to estimate the ticket sales for the next drawing, knowing the size of the last jackpot (that was not won)? I can't.
For instance, the largest Powerball jackpot was won on May 13, 2013. According to LottoReport.com, the jackpot size was $551 million with 232 million tickets sold. Let's say the jackpot was not won that day - about how may tickets would be sold for the following drawing?
Given that ticket sales increase over the previous drawing by a growing factor of at least 2 when the jackpots get over $250 million, my guess is that around 800 million tickets would be sold, bringing the jackpot to well over $1 billion dollars. And I believe a jackpot of this magnitude will happen in the next few years.
Many Thanks
Ace
