I’ve been trying to figure the odds of nobody winning tonight’s Mega Millions. It is on the order of 5%. I read that about 500 million tickets will be sold this time. This is a guesstimate. It was confirmed that 400 million were sold in the last 48 hours. That would indicate that at least 500 million tickets will be sold, and most likely more.

The odds of winning with one ticket are: 175,711,536

The odds of not winning are 175,711,535/175,711,536

The odds of 500,000,000 people not winning is (175,711,536/175,711,536)^500,000,000 which, according to my windows calculator, is 0.058 or a little better than 5%. So figure about 94.2% chance of at least one person winning. This is almost certainly.

I would suggest that you not put off buying a ticket. The jackpot will not reach this high very soon.