As prospective winners race to buy Powerball tickets, the jackpot has surged to $1.5 billion. And jackpots like this “are no stroke of luck. Last fall, lottery officials changed the odds of matching the Powerball numbers.”

+ Wired: The fascinating math behind why you won’t win Powerball. This is one of the few lottery articles that doesn’t compare your odds of winning with the odds of being struck by lightning. I’d like to win the lottery at the exact moment I was struck by lightning, just to silence the naysayers.