Dear Mark,
The other day I played keno with my best 20 lucky
numbers. The special bonus was to hit all twenty numbers and win
$30,000, or not catch one number and win close to $400. Well, my numbers
were lucky in the fact that none hit. I want to know what the odds are
of picking no numbers and of picking 20. The keno runner was very
suprised and called over several people to make sure. My husband said
that they must of called the owner at home cause this is such a rare
event. Lacy S.
Headlines from the Home Office: "The chutzpa of your favorite casino
calling it a "Special Bonus" ticket."
Let's get right to the 'rithmetic, Lacy, compliments of "Blackjack," who
is all-knowing in everything earthly and terrestrial. I mention
terrestrial here because Blackjack once worked at Area 51, or so I
believe he did. He claims he won his lifestyle on the lake at craps, but
I'm not sure.
Blackjack says that the chances of hitting twenty out of twenty in keno
are 3.5353e+018. By just moving the decimal point 18 spaces to the
right, you get 3,535,300,000,000,000,000 or a bit over 3 1/2 quintillion
to one. Now some arithmetic wizard thinkin' that he can one-up Blackjack
(I doubt any exist) by pointing out that the number appears to be one of
those made up of an endlessly repeating sequence, and that therefore the
final 3 would be followed by a 5, and should therefore be upped to 4,
write it this way: 3,535,400,000,000,000,000. But why stop there? If the
number is one of those endlessly repeating sequences, Blackjack says you
can write it: 3,535,353,535,353,535,353.
Let's play!
Putting down one bean every three seconds for an eight-hour working day,
with a half hour off for lunch and two 15-minute personal breaks,
staying at it full-time, i.e. 50 weeks per year, how long would it take
you, Lacy, to play 3,535,353,535,353,535,353 games? A trifle over
34 trillion years. How long is the earth expected to remain habitable
before the sun goes nova? Three to five billion years.
So if you, Lacy, were a genetically engineered wonder and longevity ran in
your clan (The Lost Horizon), and could arrange to take your keno game along
and continue play in roughly fourteen thousand different solar systems,
as they sequentially come into being, evolve like ours, and go BOOM!,
you could complete game number: 3,535,353,535,353,535,353.
That's a tough assignment, however. Assuming could keep on playing while
moving from one solar system to another, as one after the other of them
used up their life expectancy of 10-15 billion years, and if you didn't
tire of the sport prematurely, you would finish just about when our
Milky Way super-galaxy begins to run low on expendable minor galaxies.
Good luck, Lacy! Meanwhile, read the fine print on this bottle of Scotch.
|
Time used
|
Games played
|
|
1 minute
|
1
|
|
1 hour
|
60
|
|
1 day [actual working time]
|
420
|
|
1 week
|
2,100
|
|
1 year [50 working weeks]
|
105,000
|
|
10 years
|
1,050,000
|
|
100 years
|
10,500,000
|
|
1000 years
|
105,000,000
|
|
1 million years
|
105,000,000,000
|
|
1 billion years
|
105,000,000,000,000
|
|
1 trillion years
|
105,000,000,000,000,000
|
|
34 years
|
3,535,353,535,353,535,353
|
Oh yeah, Lacy, the odds-to-1 against hitting no numbers out of 20 are
842.38. Not too out of the ordinary, but when the house is only paying
you about $400 clams, probably not worth playing either.
Gambling quote of the week: "We would now like to acknowledge our
American friends who account for about 80% of the casinos'
attendance. By emptying your pockets, you've helped pay down our debt
and ease our taxes. We call that mighty neighborly." The Windsor Star
(Canada)
