Well, DV, the last time we talked, you confessed you didn't know mathematics and that it was impossible that the MM jackpot would go over $200 million, "when pigs fly" I think you said. Now you're here arguing that the probability of the jackpot reaching that value is 60%!
I have been tracking sales vs. jackpot jumps for sometime. I have checked my calculated variables against published figures, and am quite happy with the results. My values are well within the standard deviation for the known proportions and I have a very good picture of how these trends work. I understand quite well how to calculate these values, thank you. To remind you, it is not a number impossible to guess. It is very easy to calculate using a Poisson distribution calculation such as I described earlier in the thread. I have been collecting published information for years, and for several years conducted a statistical analysis of the occurence of certain numbers and their effect on the numbers of winners.
It is true that this calculation is an estimate and that includes certain assumptions. One assumption is that people play numbers randomly, that they don't wheel, and that the don't play their birthdays. This we know is not the case, people do wheel (lowering their probability of winning, but raising their expectation values) and play do play their own birthdays and those of their acquaintances (lowering their expectation values). Both of these factors actually increase the probability of a rollover; they do not decrease it. I believe, with some evidence, that Poisson distributions become better and better approximations as the jackpots rise, simply because more people buy quick picks, since there simply isn't time to fill out slips for the larger number of tickets they buy. Most of us know this intuitively, but I have also seen data to support this.
You are absolutely free to disbelieve me. From the readership this thread gets, I'd guess some people are interested in my calculations and find them credible. If you do not, it would be my personal wish that if you wish to question my results, you engage in mathematical formalisms to do so. So far you have not done this, but have made blind, unsupported stabs at saying that I don't know what I'm talking about. I really don't appreciate that. I've been doing higher math my whole life in connection with my profession. Some the data I have seen comes from mathematicians who have specifically been charged with studying lotteries for various purposes. I post what I do as a service. Please refrain from denigrating it.