Americans are busy thinking of ways to spend a whole lot of cash today. In the last 48 hours, an astonishing 400 million tickets for the Mega Millions drawing have been sold. On Friday, the jackpot jumped from $540m to $640m; it's the largest jackpot in US history.
The odds, at approximately 1 in 176 million, are, to put it simply, not good.
Statistician Mike Orkin got creative in The LA Times today with his discription of how likely (or unlikely) you are to be tonight's big winner:
If you have one friend in Canada, put the name of every person in Canada in a hat and pick one, you are five times as likely to pick your friend's name as you are to win the jackpot with a single ticket.
You are 19 times as likely to be struck by lightning twice, 33 times as likely to be killed in the next year by bees and 40 times as likely to be dealt five blackjacks in a row as you are to win Mega Millions.
Long odds be damned! Mega Millions madness has taken over and people are lining up across the country to be a part of the event.
Hopeful millionaires out there, we want to hear from you: Why did you buy a ticket? Did you join an office pool? What would you do with the money? Tell us in the comments and we'll add the best answers to this post.
And if you're still flirting with the idea of buying a ticket, check out this clip from The Wall Street Journal's Robbiet Whelan get inspired:
The official drawing will be broadcast from WSB-TV in Atlanta at 11pm EDT.
