Mega Millions? Mega Odds

Tonight's Mega Millions Jackpot is $323 Million. Who doesn't dream about winning the lottery? However, the odds of winning tonight's Mega Millions...are not in your favor. Some other things are, though!

Skip Garibaldi, a professor of mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, says, ''You are three times more likely to die from a falling coconut, he says; seven times more likely to die from fireworks, and way more likely to die from flesh-eating bacteria (115 fatalities a year) than you are to win the Mega Millions lottery.''

To guarantee a win by buying every single number combination, you would need to purchase 195,249,054 tickets. That would cost nearly $400 million.

According to "lottery statistics" and I honestly don't know WHO comes up with this (besides Skip, I mean)...here are several things you have a much better chance of, than winning the lottery.

You have better odds of ...

- becoming a Hollywood star ... 1 in 1.5 million

- hitting a hole in one on consecutive par-three golf holes ... 1 in 156 million

- being struck by lightning in a given one-year period ... 1 in 1 million

- being attacked by a shark ... 1 in 11.5 million

- becoming the President of the United States .. 1 in 10 million (well....look at that...so those odds ARE beatable)

- having identical quadruplets .. 1 in 15 million

- being killed by a venomous animal or plant .. 1 in 3.4 million

- dying by asteroid ... 1 in 18,000

- going to the ER with a pogo stick injury ... 1 in 115,300

- dating a supermodel ... 88,000 to 1

So there you go...you have a better chance of being killed by an asteroid or dating Alessandra Ambrosio than you have of winning the Mega-Millions....still...you just never really know, do you? Good luck!

SOURCE: Emory University and MoneyMiniBlog