Lucky You!
To put things into perspective, here are the odds of winning the Mega Millions compared to other things happening to you in any year in the USA. For a more detailed explanation of the odds, mouse over any of the linksLike this!.
| Chance of being elected president of the United States |
1 in 800,000,000If, like the President, you are a native-born American over 35 years of age who has spent the last fifteen years in the US, then you share that distinction with approximately 200,000,000 of your fellow citizens. The odds have been annualized to reflect the fact that presidential elections happen every four years. Finally, I am assuming that you are at least as capable as some of the others who've made it.
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| Chance of being eaten by an alligator |
1 in 150,000,000In this decade there were 10 fatal alligator attacks known to Wikipedia. With both the human and alligator populations increasing, we can expect this number to rise.
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| Chance of being executed for a murder you did not commit |
1 in 20,000,000There are approximately 100 executions per year in the US. Although we may never know which, if any, of these people were innocent, deathpenaltyinfo does list over 170 exonerations, or about 10%, of death row inmates. The numbers have been age-adjusted.
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| Chance of winning the jackpot in the Mega Millions |
1 in 5,000,000Roughly 52 / 258,890,850
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| Chance of being killed by lightning |
1 in 2,500,000"According to the NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS SR-193, the United States average was 0.41 deaths per million people per year from 1959 through 1994"
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| Chance of being murdered by your significant other |
1 in 2,000,000Of the approximately 150 million married persons in the United States, 760 were murdered by their spouses in 2009. Four-fifths of these victims were women (FBI, Crime in America 2009).
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| Chance of winning $1 million in the Mega Millions |
1 in 360,000Odds of getting a 5/5 (without the Mega Ball) on a single ticket: 1 in 18.5 million.
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| Chance of dying in a car accident |
1 in 80,00034,172 fatal crashes in 2008
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| Chance of earning a PhD |
1 in 1,500"Exact numbers are impossible to come by, due to changes in death rates and graduations, but approximately 3% of Americans over the age of 25 hold a Doctoral or Ph.D. degree" (answers.com).
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| Chance of being being dealt a straight flush |
1 in 173If you play around 20 games of 7 card stud a month, then you have about 240 chances in 41,584 of winning big.
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| Chance of winning $1 in the Mega Millions |
1 in 21/(74/75)52. Please note that you will have to spend $52 to make this happen.
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