A winner's mean earnings in lottery and inverse moments of the binomial distribution (Q609695)

Summary: We study the mean earnings of a lottery winner as a function of the number \(n\) of participants in the lottery and of the success probability \(p\). We show, in particular, that, for fixed \(p\), there exists an optimal value of \(n\) where the mean earnings are maximized. We also establish a relation with the inverse moments of a binomial distribution and suggest new formulas (exact and approximate) for them.