One of my current hobbies is a twice-weekly lottery ticket purchase. I can do that without embarrassment because the odds for one of my local games compared to its current jackpot shows a payback of better than four-to-one. At my current pace, if the deal remains unchanged, about six hundred centuries from now I'll have about a half chance of having hit that jackpot money.

I don't bother to pick my own numbers, I don't plan to devote thought to this for the next six hundred centuries. I glanced at my most recent ticket purchase as I walked from the counter, examining its six random numbers. (Chosen without duplicates from the range one to forty-eight, listed in ascending order.) On the ticket, I had one run of three consecutive numbers.

Hmm, thought I as I wandered back to the car, drove on to the next thing. Wonder how common that is. I chew on the idea for some minutes, and a few more minutes when checking the results of the lottery draw.

First number of the consecutive run, I thought, can be anything 46 or lower (because we have no duplicates, and two numbers left to go in the run, and we need those two to be both greater than the first number and less than 49). Once that first number is picked, though, there's only one right choice for the second, and only one right choice for the third. Since the run is three numbers long, there are four positions in the list of six numbers where the run might begin. Type, mumble, round a bit...

(46/48) * (1/47) * (1/46) * 4 = 0.001773

1 / 0.001773 = 564

So, I figure, out of a typical pile of 564 tickets with randomly selected numbers, only one will have a run of three consecutive numbers. It seemed kinda special - I'm not likely to see that happen again this year, even if I keep my hobbies the same. I sort of hated to throw that ticket away, even though it proved to be worth no winner money.

That odds calculation is actually kinda wrong, in a way that I could fix in another hour or so, but my point is:

I notice unusual things that happen to me, patterns that anyone or no one else might notice. I can determine how unlikely, how special, each of them are, and have the turn of mind that wants to do so, and some of the background that lets me have confidence in the answer.

In the end, though, I'm just ripping tickets in half, because it all that noticing and confident determining has no payoff whatsoever.

Most of the little brilliancies I spot are just that sort of random - overexaminable yet still worthless in the end. I wonder if I should think more about the economics of even noting them.

I wonder if I should be embarrassed about it.