View from the North 40: What are the odds?

Winning the big payout in any lottery is rare because the odds are astronomically against that happening, but that holds true for a lot of things.

Because the lottery folks are in the business of making money, they take paying it out very seriously. In the U.K., people who play the British National Lottery have about a 1-in-45 million chance of winning the scratch ticket’s big payout, which is significantly better than the 1-in-292.2 million odds of winning the U.S. Powerball.

People who are much smarter than I am at math can calculate different odds pretty quickly, but I do know enough to say...