If that is your objective, then you are working way to hard. With a fixed
number of tickets and a fixed payout, the expected return per ticket is
simply the ratio of the total payout to the total cost of tickets
(1,375,000/2,500,000); that is on average you will win back only 55% of what
you spend on tickets. No buying scheme can alter those odds. The only way
to improve them is to rig the game, i.e. somehow make it physically more
likely that your particular tickets are the ones selected. Hopefully rigging
a state lottery is not possible.

To see that your friends scheme does not improve his odds, consider the
possibility that 10,000 people might each use his strategy. Among them, they
would purchase all of the tickets, and (absent a rigged game) would each have
identical odds of winning. Since their expected returns would all be equal
and their total collective return (1,375,000) and total collective
expenditure (2,500,000) are known, they would average winning $137.5 per
player from their $250 per player ticket purchases. Granted a few players
would win more than $137.5, but most would win nothing, and no aspect of the
purchasing scheme can improve the odds of any one person over the others. In
reality, your friend will not be competing against 9,999 other players all
buying the same number of tickets as he, but the actual buying patterns of
the other players can do nothing to help or hurt your friends odds in this
game; i.e. his expected return will still only be 55% of his investment.

Again, to calculate the actual probabilities, read help for the HYPGEOMDIST
function and follow the examples in my original reply. Give it a try; you
are never too old to learn. You can post back your attempts for a critique.

Jerry

"Steve" wrote:

Thank you for the help.

For the record this is not a homework assignment (I am a 44 year old
grandfather and have not been in school for many years). I am also
quite familiar with the fact that winning is a long shot. A friend of
mine has proposed that this setup gives him satifactory odds. I
wanted to show him the actual odds/probabilities numericly. I am just
not sure how to calculate the numbers to prove the point to my friend.

BTW, this is an actual lottery raffle in the state of KY (http://
www.kylottery.com/raffle.html)

So how about calculating the odds?

Steve