The Lottery of Grace
A while ago, before my residency program started, we drove to the gas station to get some fuel into the car. While my husband was sorting that out, I looked across at the convenience store within the gas station and saw a notice pasted on the window stating that someone had won $50,000.00 in lottery at that location. I found that quite interesting. Normally I do not even bother to try the lottery because I just don't do well with anything lottery-like. So, I decided to find out the probability of actually winning a lottery. At the time, I realized that the probability of winning a jackpot was 1 in 13,983,816. You have a better chance of getting in a car accident, plane accident or getting struck by lightening than it is to win the lottery. I actually did a little research and found out that the lifetime odds of dying from a local meteorite, asteroid or comet impact was 1 in 1,600,000. Compared with 1 in 90 for a car accident, 1 in 250 for a fire, 1 in 60,000 for a tornado, 1 in