I wouldn’t go for the lump sum in that case, having a steady salary guaranteed for 20 years (are lottery winnings tax free?) without actually working is such a massive weight off my mind that for me it beats any future return.
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Lumpsum makes no sense in this case. Most people will not generate 7% returns and if it is in CHF then good luck with that 
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Lottery tickets are heavily engineered based on statistics, I wouldn’t run by the assumption that rules based on studies on stocks and bonds apply to them.
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I believe it wasn’t just one ticket per guest, but more like instead of a gift of, say, CHF 100 (which would be 20 tickets). So let’s say 100 guests, that would be 2000 tickets.
I believe winnings up to 1 million p.a. are, yes.
still insane. If I remember right with win for life the chance is 1:1.5mio
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Correct. Assuming they were indeed gifted 2000 tickets, their chances were 1 : 750 for one win, and 1 : 1500 for what happened.
Heard this story now for the sixth time from different peope (including you) - I‘m starting to believe this is a hoax 
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I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens often. In my circle, Win for Life are a popular gift if you don’t know what to give and know that flowers will die with the person receiving the gift anyway.
I can’t believe nobody has questioned this. If you read this and it didn’t trigger a warning in your head, please stop stock-picking or analyzing financials! 
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What do you mean, was my calculation wrong? 1 : 1’500’000 becomes 1 : 750 with 2000 tickets, no?
Yes, it’s wrong. To compute the odds of two wins, you’d multiply the probability of the first win with the probability of the second win.
Your computation is basically saying that after that first win, there’s a 50% probability that one of the remaining 1999 tickets also wins.
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Interesting that you have noticed it. I read it, but I wasn’t really interested, so it was the “fast thinking” that I used to process this, like in a small talk.
If you tell me the rules of this lottery, I will calculate the probabilities. But even 1 out of millions sounds like a lot for a lottery, the main prizes there goes like one out of trillions (million millions).
P.S. not sure anymore, it’s Sunday.
OK, so 1 : 750 is correct for 1 win and for two wins, it’s 1 : 750²?
Thankfully, based on above mistake, I only try to predict 1 winning stock at a time, and not the odds of 2 stocks rallying simultaneously 
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Euro Millions: to get the main prize, you have to have a correct combination of 5 numbers out of 50 and 2 out of 12. Odds of winning the main prize is 1 in 139,838,160 (listed on the website and matches my calculations).
- From a gut feeling the number looks very wrong
- Assume chance of winning once with 2000 tickets is 1 in 750, but you can’t just halve it to calculate the chance of winning twice. e.g. chance of rolling a 6 on a die is 1 in 6, but chance of rolling 6 twice is not 1 in 12.
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Just to be sure
Is this double lottery win actually real?
I’m only half-joking. I think if you don’t have good ‘instincts’ it can be very easy to fall for traps/frauds or make big mistakes. For example, @jes above made a very clear intuitive deduction that 1:1500 implies a 50% chance of winning on the 2nd ticket. I didn’t have this clear view and instead just saw it ‘must be wrong’ and then went to slow thinking to calculate the number.
I heard traders discuss things like this, they see something that looks wrong and due to the competitive aspect have to trade on their instincts, or if they have the time, to be able to run the numbers quickly and accurately enough to place the trade.
I think Munger also mentioned this once: the good investments you don’t even need to run the numbers in detail or do complex financial modelling as it is such an obvious ‘good deal’ that you can buy without thinking.
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Nope. There’s a trick you have to watch out for: it was 1:750 the first time, but now one of the 2 prizes is gone, so there only ~1:1500 chance that you get the remaining prize.
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Sure! If you already made 1000 fundamental analyses before.
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