Lottery is a popular way to raise funds for various public projects. For example, a lottery can fund new roads, libraries, schools, canals, churches, and college scholarships. The concept is simple: participants purchase tickets and the numbers are drawn at random. The more numbers you match, the higher your prize. However, most people do not realize that winning the lottery is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, the odds of matching five out of six numbers are quite low. The prizes are usually small—only a few hundred dollars, rather than millions of dollars as one might think from watching television advertisements.
In the United States, state governments operate their own lotteries and have monopoly rights over the sale of lottery tickets. Lottery profits are used for public purposes and the money is allocated differently in each state. For example, New York allocates most of its lottery profits to education (see Figure 7.1).
Many people use their birthdays or the numbers of friends and family members as their lucky numbers when they play the lottery. But according to mathematician Stefan Mandel, who has won the lottery 14 times, using your lucky numbers may not increase your chances of winning. Instead, he suggests you choose numbers that are not too common and avoid those that end in the same digit.
In the United States, participation rates for the lottery are high, especially among African-Americans and those in lower income households. But most NORC respondents were not overly rosy about payout and win rates, with only 8% believing they had made more money than they had lost.