I think this is an interesting problem. The New Jersey lottery this week is at $200 million. Since I am the only person who lives in Jersey I was in charge of getting the tickets. Well, maybe I was the only person who would ADMIT they live in New Jersey. I lived in New York my whole life so I had to take the cheap shot. I looked up there webpage at http://www.state.nj.us/lottery/bigrules.htm.

I would like to calculate the probability of winning the lottery. Here is a segment from the website:

The purchaser shall select or "Quick Pick" any five (5) numbers, from a range of consecutive numbers of 1 through 50 and one (1) number from a range of consecutive numbers of 1 through 36. Bet selections of less than or more than six (6) numbers will be impermissible.

I was never very good at math and I was usually disrupting the class instead of paying attention anyway. I am probably ADD, but I digress. Its also scary how much this post looks like one of those dorky math problems I had to do, but perl makes it interesting. Here is what I remember about probability

50 * 49 * 48 * 47 * 46 * 36 = $probability;

However, this is very boring and inflexible. I tried to write it in perl.

use strict;
use integer;

my $probability;

&permutation(50,5);

print $probability * 36;

sub permutation {
my ($number, $times, $counter);
($number, $times) = @_;

print "The times is $times and the number is $number.\n";

my $counter = '1';

    while ($counter < $times) {
    $probability = $number * ($number - $counter);
    $counter++;
    $number--;
    print $number, "\n";
    }
return $probability;
}

[download]
Unfortunately, $probability gets written over with each iteration.

If you want real bonus points calculate how much we could win AFTER taxes. I have 21 people signed up and we all put in $5.00. We are using quick pick and cash up front.

Ergowolf
Applying Perl to the Real World

In reply to New Jersey Lottery Probability by ergowolf

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