Powerball Lottery Winning Made Inevitable (If Not Easy)
强力球乐透的必胜法

Some set of numbers will definitely be drawn in the $1.3 billion Powerball Lottery, so all you have to do is make sure you hold every possible combination of numbers.
某个数字组合必定会赢得13亿美元的强力球乐透，因此你需要做的是确保持有每个可能的数字组合。

撰文/播音 史蒂夫·米尔斯基
翻译 Meatle
审核 乔虹

 “There’s a story in the book, a story about people who took advantage of the law of inevitability to win the lottery.” That’s mathematician David Hand, talking about his 2014 book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles and Rare Events Happen Every Day. The law of inevitability comes into play in lottery drawings—some set of numbers will be drawn, so a potential winning combination is inevitable. The key word being potential, as nobody has yet won the multi-state Powerball lottery. Which means that the jackpot for the next drawing, the night of January 13th, is up to some $1.3 billion. You could buy a ticket and hope. Or, as you may have mused, you could buy every possible set of numbers to inevitably win.
“在我的书中有个故事，讲的是一群人利用必然性法则赢得了乐透。”数学家大卫·汉德，谈到了他2014年的书《不可能原理：为什么巧合、奇迹和罕见事件每天都在发生》。彩票开奖体现了必然性法则——某种数字组合将会被开出，因此一个潜在的中奖数字组合是必然存在的。这里的关键词是潜在的，因为到现在都没人赢得跨州的强力球乐透。这就意味着，在1月13日晚上开出的头奖，将会达到13亿美元。你可以只买一发，然后静候佳音。或者，你可能暗自思考过，干脆买下所有的数字组合，这样就必定会获得大奖。

“1992, Virginia State Lottery, the Virginia State Lottery is a 6/44 lottery, you have to choose six numbers out of 44, which means it’s a 1 in 7 million chance that a particular ticket will be the jackpot-winning ticket. Seven million. So if you bought all the tickets it would only cost you $7 million. So they waited until the rollover jackpot had built up to, hadn’t been won, so it built up over several weeks to $27 million. If you manage to spend $7 million and buy all the 7 million tickets you are guaranteed to hold the jackpot winning ticket. But there’s a lot of organization involved in this.  In fact, what happened was they put together a consortium of 2,500 people, each of whom paid $3,000 or thereabouts, so they had $7 million. And then in the few days’ window they had available they ran around buying—trying to buy all the 7 million tickets.”
“1992年弗吉尼亚州的乐透，要从44个数字中选出6个数字作为获胜号码，这意味着任意一个数字组合赢得头奖的概率是七百万分之一。七百万，所以如果你买下所有的数字组合将只会花掉7,000,000美元。因此他们保持观望，直至头奖翻番。几周后，由于没有人中奖，奖金累积到27,000,000美元。如果你能花掉七百万美元去买七百万张彩票，你能保证自己持有赢得头奖的那一张。
但其实这其中涉及到了很多个组织。实际情况是，他们组织了一个由2500人的合伙团体，每人支付大约3,000美元，从而保证了七百万美元的资金。同时，在几天的时间中，他们需要跑来跑去地买彩票，尝试买完七百万种可能的组合。

Trying to buy. Because the consortium only managed to buy 5 million tickets. So winning was not inevitable, their chances were only five out of seven.  
但也只是试图去买完所有的组合，到头来，这个合伙组织只买到了五百万张彩票。因此这不是必胜的状况，他们只有七分之五的机会拿到头奖。

“As it happened, however, they did have the winning ticket, so they were guaranteed winning the jackpot. The organization beforehand, the logistics of running around trying to buy these tickets, the nail-biting looking through the tickets, it’s easier just to get a job.”
“尽管如此，他们确实有那张中奖彩票，因此他们确实赢了头奖。这些事前的组织，四处走动以购买彩票消耗的后勤资源，等待开奖时的焦虑不安，才产出这么点钱，还不如去找份工作。”

So if you’re thinking of getting together a consortium for the Powerball, keep in mind that for this lottery there’s only a one in 292 million chance of winning. And tickets are two bucks a pop. So you and your buddies are going to have to come up with almost $600 million to buy every combo and take advantage of the law of inevitability. And if others pick the same winning numbers and you have to split the winnings you could basically break even or even lose money.
因此如果你想为强力球组织一个合伙团体，请牢记这个彩票的中奖率为2.92亿分之一。同时，每张彩票的价格是两美元。因此你和你的弟兄们要筹集差不多六亿美元去购买每个可能的数字组合，这样必然性法则才能保证你获利。而且，如果其他人也中了头奖，你需要跟他瓜分奖金，甚至造成亏损。

To put the frenzy in perspective, I like to recall the wisdom of statistician Michael Orkin, author of the book What Are the Odds? Chance in Everyday Life. Back in 2001, the Powerball jackpot had reached $295 million and the odds back then were better, only 175 million to one. Orkin told me, “if you have to drive 10 miles to buy a Powerball ticket, you’re 16 times more likely to get killed in a car crash on your way than you are to win.” So if you’re dead set on buying a lottery ticket, at least walk.
为了将疯狂的想法放到一边，我喜欢回想《何谓概率：生活中的机遇》的作者，统计学家米歇尔·奥尔金的金玉良言。2001年那时候，强力球的头奖达到了2.95亿美元，而当时中奖的概率要更大，达到了1.75亿分之一。奥尔金告诉我：“如果你需要驱车10英里去买一张强力球，你死于交通事故的概率将是赢的奖金的16倍。”因此如果你执意于购买彩票，至少应该走路去买。