Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 02, 2020

That Goat always has an encouraging word.

there is a guy who went out and developed a system to win the lotto. he died he was called richard Justig that was two years ago

Pig, you can bury it in my backyard.

Lotto tickets, little brains.

Of course, the odds are nil if you don’t buy at least one Lotto ticket.

“But somebody has to win, why not me?”

Nobody has become richer by burying their money, but some people have won the lottery.

or, you could just light your cash on fire…

of course, that knowledge has never stopped me expecting that my ship will come in one day…

Goat is a buzz kill but correct. In any form of gambling the house always wins! Gambling also seems to ravage the poor and disadvantaged as well. When I was in graduate school in Alabama me and some classmates used to go to the greyhound tracks in Eutah and Birmingham on Tuesday nights as it was 50 cent beer, hot dog and wing night. If the Tuesday fell on the 3rd of the month the place would be packed with seniors, disabled and others who just got their social security or pension and as you can guess more people left in the red than with a profit. I used to take $15 or $20 with me to enjoy a few pops, some food and place a couple of quinellas and intentionally left my ATM card at home to avoid spending more than I could afford. In retrospect the dog track was inhumane and now they are closed in Florida and only open in a handful of states like Alabama, Texas and Arkansas though horse betting and the poker rooms remain very popular. Put your money in better places unless you are a dumb college kid who wanted to burn $20 on the dogs or horses instead of a couple of pitchers of suds at the campus pub…..

What are you now, a Pirate Pig?

Is Pig burying the $100 in $1 bills?

And…..there’s your pig in a poke!

Wonder what would have happened if Goat hit Pig with the Ol’ “Your chances of winning that are the same as getting struck by lightning twice & surviving both times!”

The problem is you must have a ticket to win. How do you get a ticket if you don’t buy one ? … Croc Power !

The odds of winning are about the same whether you buy a ticket or not.

“You can’t win if you don’t play.” – used to be our Lotto tagline (I’ve never played, and, sure enough, I’ve never won).

Poor poor PIG! He’s so clueless

the Lottery: a voluntary tax on the mathematically challenged.

Which reminds me, I need to check my numbers from last night’s drawing.

Your odds of winning the lottery are exactly the same, whether you buy a ticket or not (accurate to the 6th decimal place).

A negligible chance is pretty much the same as a 100 X negligible chance or even 10,000 X negligible chance. But negligible is a whole lot greater than zero.

Garry Shandling once said something to the effect of “I was driving to Vegas to do some gambling. On the way there, I should have just rolled down the window and thrown my money out the window…it’s the same @#%$ thing!”

A few years ago, one of the lotteries had the first billion dollar jackpot. I think it had risen to 1.5 billion by the time all the tickets were sold. I hadn’t bought a lottery ticket in a long time, and was quite aware of the odds and what they meant. Still, I just wanted to participate in the moment, so I went to a convenience store and bought one ticket.

The clerk looked at me in surprise and said “just one?”

“In drerd dein gelt.*” – Yiddish folk saying

*Exactly what Pig did in Panel #4

Pig is so gullible

Lotteries, and gambling in general, is fine if you look at it as entertainment. If, instead of going to the movies, buying tickets and popcorn and whatever along the way, you take that money to the casino, it’s all the same in the end.

Just don’t take your rent/mortgage money or your power/water/phone/cable/internet bill money down there.

I don’t play lotto because there are barely any chances of me winning.

Stand back and wait for the money tree

About 30 years ago I put 25c into a slot machine and immediately got 50c back. At that point I decided to quit while I was ahead! :) … lotto would make sense to me if as the pot increased there were more large prizes available (eg starting at 1x 1 mill, and scaling to 10x 1mill, 100x 1mill etc as the total prize fund grew) but just to have a larger jackpot makes no sense to me as I’ve no more chance of winning if a single prize goes from 1 mill to 10 mill to 100 mill. Maybe I just never understood gambling.

You can run around in a lightning storm. Your odds of being struck by lightning are almost the same as if you stay inside.

You have to consider expected value, the product of the odds and the pot. If it exceeds the price of a ticket you might think about buying one. I doubt Pig does arithmetic though.

The odds of getting the winning ticket in the McD’s game a while back were excellent if you were a member of the crook’s family.

Assemble a horizontal stack of pennies running from San Antonio to Dallas. One of them, placed randomly, has an “X” scratched on it. Your chance of winning the lotto with one ticket is about the same as your chance of finding that penny with one try. More tickets, more tries. It’s a form of voluntary taxation.

Here’s the thing about the lottery in comparison to things like burying the money: Someone will win!

one or two dollars for a chance to win a life changing amount. It’s not a linear calculation!

From bad to worse. Give up

Lottery: fools’ tax.

Pig is having one of his Dullard Days. Dig it, Pig?

There are multiple lotteries out there, so I say, find the one with the best odds, and buy tickets for that.