Perspective

April 19, 2010

I was watching the news last night, which is odd because I almost never watch the news. Anyway, there was a story about these two golfing buddies. These guys were out golfing and buddy number one steps up to a par 3 and aces it. Hole-in-one. Buddy number two, not to be outdone, knocks in a hole-in-one for himself. Back to back holes-in-one. Pretty amazing.

Back in the studio the news folks are chatting about this. News guy one says Golf Digest (or someone) calculated the odds of back to back holes-in-one at 1 in 17,000,000. News guy two says “Wow! You’d have an easier time winning the lottery”. I call news guy two an idiot. No. No you would not have an easier time winning the lottery.

I assume we’re talking about the jackpot here of course. Maybe the reporter was talking about winning anything at all. Like a dollar to buy another lottery ticket with, in which case you have my apologies news guys number two. But if we’re talking about winning the Powerball, for example, the odds of winning the grand prize is 1 in 195,249,054.

I knew it was somewhere around there having looked this up just a few days ago, but it made me think: you are ten times more likely make back to back holes-in-one than you are to win the lottery. Those are some pretty long odds.