Letter: Quirky trends in life’s lottery (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Letter: Quirky trends in life’s lottery

4:26pm Thursday 16th August 2012 in Readers' letters

IN broad terms, a great many people fall into two types: spenders or savers.

Sometimes a spender has what I believe is referred to as an ‘lbm’ – light-bulb moment – and they change polarity. There are times when it’s possible to live within your means, times when it’s exceedingly hard to do so; and periods when it’s impossible to balance income and expenditure.

The increase in the popularity of the National Lottery seems a paradox during hard times but when people are struggling to make ends meet, the allure of winning a large amount of the Lottery is bound to be appealing.

Unfortunately, all one has to do is to look at the statistics in relation to the prizes to realise that ‘It’s unlikely to be you’.

The problem here is that people seem to be unable, or choose to ignore, two probabilities – the probability of someone winning the jackpot is exceedingly high, but the probability of you winning the jackpot is exceedingly low.

In addition, just how many Lottery players are locked-in through selecting the same numbers each week and dare not cease playing in case the week after, ‘their’ numbers come up.

Kevin, Colne (via website).