I'm starting to be as clear as BA!! oh noooo :)
I can dumb it down since each of us seems to need to do that for the other to make any sense of things.
Odds are talking about the chances of 1 occurrence of an event happening versus the chances of some other, mutually exclusive event, happening. Mutually exclusive means there is 0 chance that both of the events happen at the same time.
Probability is talking about the chances of a positive result happening out of all of the possible results.
Examples:
Odds of hitting a pick 3 straight with one pick is 1:999. there is 1 chance of hitting versus 999 chances of not hitting. You could also use odds to compare the chances of different types of picks. So odds of hitting a pick 3 straight versus hitting a pick 3 box are 1:6. Might be useful in some kind of circumstance idk.
Probability of hitting a pick 3 straight is 1 in 1000, or 0.1%. Probability of hitting a pick 3 box is 6 in 1000, broken down to about 1 in 167, or 0.6%.
Funny thing is, even the Wisconsin lottery website and published odds gets this wrong. It lists the "odds" of hitting a straight pick 3 as "1:1000" when it is really either "1 in 1000" or "1:999". Unless there's one more possible pick 3 combination that I'm missing?