INTERACTIVE DISPLAYS
POWERBALL!The game of Powerball involves a constestant selecting five unique "white" balls between 1 and 59, and one "powerball" between 1 and 39. Winning white and powerball numbers are randomly drawn twice a week, along with a "multiplier" ball that is between 1 and 5. The muliplier ball multiplies any winnings by the number drawn.
Since the drawings are completely random, there is no strategy that can be employed to "win" the game. The odds of winning various prizes are based on the laws of probability, and displayed on the Powerball website.
The display below illustrates what cumulative winnings might be if they same numbers were played over 1000 games. Any combination of numbers may be selected below for the five white balls (W1-W5) and the Powerball (PB). The 1000 "games" used to create this graphic were generated by a computer simulation.
Without knowing the outcome of a drawing before it happens, the expected earnings over 1000 games is between a $400 and $800 LOSS. The chart on the left shows cumulative winnings over the 1000 games, and the table to right shows the games where a prize was won, with correctly chosen numbers in green (click on a row to highlight the game in the chart).
The moral of the story is that in the long run contestants loose money playing Powerball!
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