Chapter 4: Rational Numbers: Positive and Negative Fractions Numbers in the Real World

Lottery Clubs

Many people are checking into "How to Form a Lottery Club and Win your Share of Millions."  Basically, instead of one person filling out many tickets (and paying for them as well), people have formed teams in order to win BIG!!! (To see how large the state, national, and international jackpots get, check out LotteryUSA.)  They each buy a ticket, and, if anyone wins, they split the money.

You decide to go in equally with 19 other people in a 100-ticket group in Florida with a jackpot of $38 million.  You also decide to join a 100-ticket group with nine others equally in Illinois, which has a jackpot of $22 million.

Assuming the tickets are $1 apiece, how much money did you spend on tickets? 

What fraction of the prize money would you win in the Florida jackpot?    In Illinois? 
If your club wins the Florida lottery, how much money will you receive? 
If your other group has the winning Illinois ticket, what is your share? 
Since this is hypothetical anyway, we will assume that you win both lotteries.  How much do you get? 

On the same vein, assume that (1) your math teacher gave you a great random number generator for your graphing calculator,  (2) you used that to pick your numbers, (3) you played by yourself, not in a club, and (4) your numbers won a $12 million lottery.  If you gave 1/4 of the money to your math teacher,  how much would each of you get?

Everyone in your new club (everyone wants to be in it since you win so often) wants to win $350,000 apiece.  Assuming that each person in your new club would receive 1/50 of the total money, how large must the jackpot be to accommodate them?