Ken Graham: FROM THE PUBLISHER

As most of you did, I’m sure, I bought some Powerball tickets this week. Three, to be exact. I picked the numbers myself.

For those of you living in a cave, the jackpot prize for the Powerball lottery drawing to be held Wednesday evening has grown to about $1.4 billion (that’s “billion,” with a “b”).

So how could I not? But this is the first time I’ve bought a lottery ticket in at least 20 years.

I blame college. I earned a degree many years ago in economics, and in the process I took a lot of statistics classes. Without doubt, the knowledge I gained in those statistics classes has taken a lot...