Winning a Punjab Bumper Lottery is very unlikley. But just how unlikely is it, really?
Can you order these events by probability, with the most likely at the top and the least likely at the bottom?
Sources: Directorate of Punjab State Loteries; Election Commission of India; National Crime Records Bureau; Union Public Service Commission Annual Report, 2015-16
The odds of winning the four Punjab state bumper lotteries in 2015 were as follows: Diwali - 1 in 5.9 lakh, Rakhi - 1 in 4.9 lakh, Baisakhi - 1 in 4.5 lakh, New Year - 1 in 3.1 lakh.
Were you able to order the probability of these events correctly? If so, you’ve managed to overcome a common feature of human irrationality: the tendency to think improbable events are more likely than they actually are.
“When asked to estimate the probability of [rare, high-impact events], people tend to overestimate this probability,” writes Nicholas Barberis, a professor of the Yale School of Management.
This tendency makes it hard for most of us to accurately compare the likelihood of improbable events. People know that it’s unlikely they’ll win the lottery, and they know it’s unlikely they’ll get killed by a speeding car. They just don’t know how unlikely. If people really understood their chances of dying in a road accident were about 35 times higher than winning the Punjab state lottery on New Year’s Eve, perhaps they’d drive a little more carefully — and play the lottery a little less often.
Danish Raza and Samarth Bansal contributed reporting for this game.