probability problem

Question

In the Iowa Pick 5 lottery, you win the grand prize by correctly choosing the same group of 5 numbers from 1 to 38 as chosen by the computer. What is the probability that a player will wind the grand prize by playing 1 ticket?

Answer 1

I presume that the numbers can occur in any order.

If so, then the odds on the first number are 5/38; the second number 4/37; the third number 3/36; the fourth number 2/35; the last number 1/34.

 

We then multiply all of those fractions together to get 0.000001989.

 

We then take the reciprocal of that number to get odds of 1 in 502,678