Millions of Americans on Wednesday will try their luck at winning a $700 million Powerball jackpot. The odds of taking home the second largest U.S. lottery jackpot in history are one in 292.2 million, officials said.
“You’re far more likely to die at a trip to the Grand Canyon than win the Powerball,” Amram Shapiro, a strategic statistician and author of The Book of Odds, told TIME in January 2016, when the jackpot hit $1.5 billion. “That’s the scale of all of this. It’s fascinating. They’re buying a dream.” Shapiro, of Massachusetts, drew from a research trove of more than 400,000 statements of probability to write the 2014 reference source of statistics on everyday life.
“There’s a point of view that says people who buy lottery tickets are being foolish because the expected return on their investment is so poor,” Shapiro said. “But at the same time there is a kind of mass phenomenon that attracts people. What you’re really paying for is the right to dream about what it would be like to have your life utterly transformed by money.”
Here are 10 things that are more likely to occur than winning the lottery:
1. Dying from an asteroid strike: 1 in 74,817,414
2. Getting killed by a terrorist act in the United States: 1 in 10,000,000
3. Getting murdered during a trip to the Grand Canyon: 1 in 8,156,000
4. Dying from chronic constipation: 1 in 2,215,900
5. Becoming a movie star: 1 in 1,505,000
6. Getting struck by lightning: 1 in 1,101,000
7. Dying from a hornet, wasp or bee sting: 1 in 79,842
8. Bowling a 300 game: 1 in 11,500
9. Being the same height actor Hugh Jackman, who is 6-foot-2: 1 in 23.3
10. Becoming disabled, disfigured or killed by a parasite: 1 in 7.2
More Must-Reads From TIME
- Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
- Biden’s Campaign Is In Trouble. Will the Turnaround Plan Work?
- Why We're Spending So Much Money Now
- The Financial Influencers Women Actually Want to Listen To
- Breaker Sunny Choi Is Heading to Paris
- Why TV Can’t Stop Making Silly Shows About Lady Journalists
- The Case for Wearing Shoes in the House
- Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time
Contact us at letters@time.com