04-25-2006, 08:21 AM
Ave
I received the following in an unsolicited e-mail this morning and thought you might find the contents to be of interest.
"Hello. I am working on learning how the combin function works, and what the results actually means. I actually got this example from a book but it didn't explain it very thoroughly. If there are 49 possible lottery numbers to choose from, and I can choose 6 if I buy a ticket, then my formula would be =combin(49,6) and the result is 13,983,816. The book I am working with leads me to interpret the result as follows: I would need to buy 13,983,816, choosing 6 numbers on each ticket, in order to exhaust all the possibile combinations, therefore eliminating any possibility of losing the lottery. Where I am getting confused (and it's probably just that I'm thinking about it backwards), is that if I reduce the number of choices from 6 down to 5, the resulting number drops from 13,983,816 to 1,906,884. So, I am interpreting this as follows: If I reduce the amount of numbers that I am able to choose per ticket, I would only have to purchase 1,906,884 tickets in order to exhaust all possibilities of losing the lottery. This is opposite of what I was expecting. So I am assuming I am not understanding the whole thing correctly. Any help is appreciated. Furthermore, if I can overcome this obstacle, my next question is, how to fit into the calculation, if a person were to purchase 2 tickets. Would this be as easy as doubling the choices from 6 to 12? Thanks again Scott "
What do you think?
Vale
M. Spedius Corbulo
I received the following in an unsolicited e-mail this morning and thought you might find the contents to be of interest.
"Hello. I am working on learning how the combin function works, and what the results actually means. I actually got this example from a book but it didn't explain it very thoroughly. If there are 49 possible lottery numbers to choose from, and I can choose 6 if I buy a ticket, then my formula would be =combin(49,6) and the result is 13,983,816. The book I am working with leads me to interpret the result as follows: I would need to buy 13,983,816, choosing 6 numbers on each ticket, in order to exhaust all the possibile combinations, therefore eliminating any possibility of losing the lottery. Where I am getting confused (and it's probably just that I'm thinking about it backwards), is that if I reduce the number of choices from 6 down to 5, the resulting number drops from 13,983,816 to 1,906,884. So, I am interpreting this as follows: If I reduce the amount of numbers that I am able to choose per ticket, I would only have to purchase 1,906,884 tickets in order to exhaust all possibilities of losing the lottery. This is opposite of what I was expecting. So I am assuming I am not understanding the whole thing correctly. Any help is appreciated. Furthermore, if I can overcome this obstacle, my next question is, how to fit into the calculation, if a person were to purchase 2 tickets. Would this be as easy as doubling the choices from 6 to 12? Thanks again Scott "
What do you think?
Vale
M. Spedius Corbulo
![[Image: spedius-mcmxliii.gif]](http://www.nhmgs.org/images/spedius-mcmxliii.gif)
