The Powerball Lottery

The Powerball Lotter Project:

The Powerball Lottery is an exciting way to lose small amounts of money. If you purchase a $2 ticket, you can pick six numbers: five drawn from 1 to 69, and a sixth “Powerball” number drawn from 1 to 26. The order of the numbers doesn’t matter. If the lottery selects your six numbers, you win $1.586 billion dollars! Except you won’t win, because your odds are 1 in 292,201,338. But if you spent $200 on 100 tickets, your odds would be . . . 1 in 2,922,013. You won’t win that either, but at least you’ll lose 100 times as much money. The more you like losing money, the more fun the lottery is!

To help you visualize how often you won’t win the lottery, write a program that simulates up to one million Powerball drawings and then compares them with the numbers you picked. Now you can have all the excitement of losing the lottery without spending money.

When you run your program, the output should look like this:

Each powerball lottery ticket costs $2. The jackpot for this game

is $1.586 billion! It doesn't matter what the jackpot is, though,

because the odds are 1 in 292,201,338, so you won't win.

This simulation gives you the thrill of playing without wasting money.

Enter 5 different numbers from 1 to 69, with spaces between

each number. (For example: 5 17 23 42 50 51)

> 1 2 3 4 5

Enter the powerball number from 1 to 26.

> 6

How many times do you want to play? (Max: 1000000)

> 1000000

It costs $2000000 to play 1000000 times, but don't

worry. I'm sure you'll win it all back.

Press Enter to start...

The winning numbers are: 12 29 48 11 4 and 13  You lost.

The winning numbers are: 54 39 3 42 16 and 12  You lost.

The winning numbers are: 56 4 63 23 38 and 24  You lost.

--snip--

The winning numbers are: 46 29 10 62 17 and 21 You lost.

The winning numbers are: 5 20 18 65 30 and 10  You lost.

The winning numbers are: 54 30 58 10 1 and 18  You lost.

All done!

That cost you $2000000 and you won $0.

You wasted $2000000.

Thanks for playing!