Question

In a lottery, the top cash prize was $616 million, going to three lucky winners. Players pick five different numbers from 1 to 54 and one number from 1 to 41. A player wins a minimum award of $100 by correctly matching two numbers drawn from the white balls (1 through 54) and matching the number on the gold ball (1 through 41). What is the probability of winning the minimum award?

a) 1 in 20,840
b) 1 in 12,600
c) 1 in 10,000
d) 1 in 25,200

Answer 1

To find the probability of winning the minimum award in the lottery, we need to calculate the probability of correctly matching two numbers from the white balls and matching the number on the gold ball.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the probability of winning the minimum award in the lottery, we need to calculate the probability of correctly matching two numbers from the white balls (1 through 54) and matching the number on the gold ball (1 through 41).

The probability of correctly matching two numbers from the white balls is calculated by dividing the number of ways to choose 2 numbers from 54 (54 choose 2) by the total number of possible combinations of 5 numbers from 54 (54 choose 5). The probability of matching the number on the gold ball is 1 out of 41.

To calculate the overall probability, we multiply the probability of matching two white balls by the probability of matching the gold ball. So the probability of winning the minimum award is (54 choose 2) / (54 choose 5) * 1/41.