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Powerball jackpot: These are your odds of winning
The Powerball jackpot stands at a new record high of $1.9 billion.
CHICAGO - The Powerball jackpot stands at a new record high of $1.9 billion, and as the prize keeps increasing, so does the frenzy.
Stop by any place selling Powerball tickets, and you'll likely find someone feeling confident.
"Look at me now. I am the winner. I am the winner!" exclaimed Vernetta Williams as she purchased her tickets in Chicago Monday morning.
As the jackpot grows, so does the dreaming.
"Couple houses, Caribbean, maybe Europe. You know everyone's got to dream right," said Randy Tuffey as she imagined her winnings.
We hate to crush anyone's dreams, so we'll let a mathematics professor from NIU tell you the odds of winning.
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"It works out to just under one in 300 million," said Dr. Chris McCord, NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences.
Professor McCord says buying 15 tickets instead of one really doesn't help.
"What you have done is increased the likelihood that you will lose $30."
One refrain we keep hearing is, "somebody's got to win." But nobody has won the Powerball since early August.
"Most likely there will be one winning ticket, but it's random. There could be zero winning tickets, there could be 20 winning tickets, we don't know," said McCord.
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Kim Lee carefully picked each of her numbers Monday using numbers like birthdates, hoping to hit the winning combination.
"I feel like if you don't try, you won't win," she said.
But is there any way to zero in on which of those lottery balls will get picked? Sorry, but no.
"If you like playing your significant other's birthday, it's as good as any other number, but it's not any better," said McCord.
If you somehow have the winning numbers, it's hard to fathom how much money this is.
"Every day for 29 years, you would have to spend $180,000 a day to spend $1.9 billion dollars," said McCord.
His advice: feel free to dream about that jackpot, but don't spend too much trying to get it.