Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for March 20, 2016

And I bet the zinnia is still blooming well after three months. (How recent of a discov’ry of that white giraffe?)

I hope that trigger-happy dentist in St Paul doesn’t find out about that giraffe.

That means that until fairly recently, the likelihood of a cow providing the leather for a Superbowl football was TEN TIMES greater than the likelihood of any single Powerball or Megamillions ticket winning the big jackpot.

That is, roughly a 1 in 17 1/2 million chance vs 1 in 175 million.Don’t worry…the lotteries didn’t like those odds, and both have changed their systems…

Now the odds of winning Powerball are 1 in almost 300 million, and Megamillions will give you a better shot… 1 in about 250 million.

So the cow has an even BETTER chance than ever of being in the Superbowl, compared to your shot at luxury living.

IE…. the odds of your ticket winning the lottery are about 15 times worse than the odds of the hide of any particular cow being turned into a football that gets used in the Super Bowl.

So, knowing that….

and knowing arithmetic…. I still buy a Megamillions ticket.ONE ticket.Hey, it’s a dream…how many dreams can you buy for one dollar?

I wonder whether he really meant “cow” or merely a bovine of any gender? I also wonder what the odds are that a “cow” (or steer, more likely) would become a football of any kind, regardless of whether it’s used in someone’s backyard or a pro game?

I like to think of Earth as a flower that bloomed in space…

Wow, what a lucky cow! And I thought it was pigskin?!!?

If you have a roll of pennies 274 miles long, and you drive along it for awhile and stop and select just the right penny from that roll, you win the lottery. I’ll keep my dollar.

Alexi … Um… You were going along ok, and then you made a wild turn I can’t follow, and veered off the track.

I don’t know whether you got the 11 million plus from Google out calculated it yourself, but…5 numbers from a pool of 69 … It’s been a LOT of years.. . but as I recall…

69 choices for the first, 68 for the second, etc..So you have 69*68*67*66*65 choices, but since the numbers don’t have to be in order, you can divide that enormous result by all the ways to order 5 numbers, which is 5! (5*4*3*2*1)… and yup!… 11,238,513

But that’s when you zoomed away.You’re not taking 6 numbers out of 95… If you did, then yes.you’d have 95*94*93*92*91*90/6!But you never had 95 numbers to choose from.You already know the odds for the first five, now you have 26 choices, not 95, for the next number.. Take your 11 million plus odds for the first five times the 26 you can choose from now, and you get 292 million and a bit more.

Cool. It worked. I never actually calculated it till now.I just trusted the lottery website when it said about 1 in 293 million… and rounded it to almost 300 million in my post.

If you win, the odds don’t matter.

“touching spirit giraffe”

I’m waiting, Ben.

Actually Your chance of wining are the lottery are one for each ticket you buy in the same week from the same vender. Buy 293+million tickets and you will win.

You can’t buy a sure fire win. First, 293 million tickets won’t help you unless you’re careful each one is unique, to cover every possible combination of numbers. A permutation of the SAME numbers (ie 3, 7, 22,9, 5 vs 22, 5,3,7,9) is just a duplicate ticket and won’t help your odds.It’s amazing how many people think 10 of the exact same ticket will help…. or that buying 293 million quick picks (machine chosen numbers) would automatically cover all the combinations. No. The number of vendors you bought them all from makes no difference either. And buying one ticket of every combination absolutely ensures that every other person who bought a ticket for that draw shares one of them.You might win on a combination no one else bought… but otherwise, anybody who was fated to win would now share with you. And you provided the huge prize money.

Nah… I buy one ticket, just because the dream makes me feel hopeful, even though I know the impossibility. I don’t buy recreational drugs or cigarettes, ever, and liquor, beer or Starbucks are quite rare… so i figure a single lottery ticket is a very small indulgence …