  The small sizes of low mass stars in principle provide an opportunity to find
Earth-like planets and "super-Earths" in habitable zones via transits. Large
area synoptic surveys like Pan-STARRS and LSST will observe large numbers of
low mass stars, albeit with widely spaced (sparse) time sampling relative to
the planets' periods and transit durations. We present simple analytical
equations that can be used to estimate the feasibility of a survey by setting
upper limits to the number of transiting planets that will be detected. We use
Monte Carlo simulations to find upper limits for the number of transiting
planets that may be discovered in the Pan-STARRS Medium Deep and 3-pi surveys.
Our search for transiting planets and M-dwarf eclipsing binaries in the SDSS-II
supernova data is used to illustrate the problems (and successes) in using
sparsely sampled surveys.
