Hat tip to Charles Kafoglis of Incarnate Word Academy in Houston (and a 2016 NGPF Fellow) for pointing out this Texas Lottery resource to me.

Here’s an idea on how you can use this interactive to create a mini-activity to experience the lottery (at no cost):

• Tell students that they are going to calculate their return on investment (ROI) for purchasing lottery tickets over the past 6 months.
• The minimum wager for PowerBall is $2 per ticket
• There are two drawings per week, so students will have 52 opportunities to win (or lose!)
• Therefore their total investment over the six month period will be $104 (52 games X $2 per game)
• Assume that students play the same six numbers over this period (most lottery players seem to have their “lucky” numbers).
• Have students select their six numbers to be played over that period (no peaking at previous winning numbers!)
  • First five numbers are non-repeatable and must be between 1-69
  • Powerball (the sixth number) must be between 1-35
• Students enter their numbers in the grid in upper right hand corner of Texas Lottery page (I input my own random numbers):

• Let’s see how I did by clicking on Check Results button:

• Cool! I hit the Powerball number in three of these drawings and hit one additional number in two of the drawings. Total up my winnings and drumroll please….I win $40 ($12+$8+$20). Yay! Well not so fast…
• Take my winnings and subtract my total investment ($40 – $104) and I am an overall loser of $64 over this period.
• Whip around the room to ask each student what their overall gain (or loss) is and calculate:
  • Percentage of students who made more than their original investment of $104
  • How the overall class did by adding up all the gains and losses
  • Number of matches that students had (in my above example, the answer would be 3)

Here are some discussion questions to accompany this interactive:

• Have you every played the lottery?
• Did you win or lose (any of  your numbers match)?
• Are you surprised that you had several of your numbers match and still lost money?
• Do you think that lottery companies want you to win small amounts so you don’t notice that overall you are losing money?
• Will this change your attitudes about lotteries? Why or why not?

__________

This post was made into an activity! View the activity here.

Check out the NGPF Lesson: Playing the Lottery

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.