Lifestyle / Powerball Go Ahead and Buy a Powerball Ticket It can be a 'rational decision,' according to 'NYT' columnist By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff Posted Jan 13, 2016 4:13 AM CST Copied Purchased Powerball lottery tickets are shown Tuesday in Miami. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz) The Powerball jackpot has entered the stratosphere at an estimated $1.5 billion, causing the country to come down with a serious case of lottery fever ahead of Wednesday's drawing. Some related reading on the biggest lottery jackpot in history: The New York Times revisits an article from early 2015 explaining why buying lottery tickets can be a "completely rational decision" despite the ludicrously low chances of winning. Being killed by a vending machine is among the things Live Science lists as more likely than winning the jackpot. At FiveThirtyEight, Walt Hickey crunches the numbers to find out the odds of there being a winner on Wednesday—though he notes that it is "very hard to develop a sanity test for this number." The Detroit Free Press looks at how much tax the winner will have to cough up and talks to some of the Canadians crossing the border for tickets. "Jackpot fatigue?" The Los Angeles Times takes a look at how the jackpot came to be so enormous. The AP looks at the six states that have opted out of Powerball, including two where residents can't simply pop across the state line for tickets. The winner will have a choice between a lump sum and an annuity, and the New York Times explains why it makes more sense to go for the latter. One reason: "No matter what stupid choices you make this year, you'll have an enormous check waiting for you next year." (More Powerball stories.) Report an error