Question

If you buy a raffle ticket and there is only one prize available, you can double your probability of winning that prize by buying two tickets.

true or false

Answer 1

What do you think?

Answer 2

true. :P

Answer 3

If nobody else buys any raffle tickets. And you buy only one, what are your probability of winning?

Answer 4

pretty good :P

Answer 5

It's 100 percent. If you then buy another, do your odds double?

Answer 6

@polpak probability not odds

Answer 7

I use odds to mean probability, since I can never remember what odds are.

Answer 8

probability of event A is p, then odds in favor is
\[\frac{p}{1-p}\]

Answer 9

What a silly quantity.

Answer 10

well not really. if something is twice as likely to happen as not, then say odds are two to one. makes good sense. instead of saying "the probability it
\[\frac{2}{3}\]

Answer 11

i means they are obviously interchangeable, but you might want to think of it in terms of odds some times

Answer 12

I can't think of a good situation where I'd want odds. ;p

Answer 13

like the example i just gave?

Answer 14

I'd still prefer 2/3.. But I tend to deal with repeatable events. I suppose for something that will only be decided once, odds makes more sense.

Answer 15

clearly some people find it useful. especially in gambling. playing ponies. they don't say "the probability mr clean wins is .2 they say the odds the horse loses is 4 to 1

Answer 16

Right, because the race only has 1 eventual outcome, probability tells you what the distribution of desirable events is amongst a pool of chances. Odds tells you what event is most likely (and by how much).

Answer 17

So I guess I can see odds being used when something only happens once and you want to know what outcome is most likely.

Answer 18

The Answer Is True!