Why do so many people play the lottery?

Why do so many people play the lottery?

If they really want to get rich, this is obviously a terrible way to try to do it (not just because the odds of winning a jackpot are extremely small; but because the jackpots themselves are actually quite small most of the time and in most non-national lotteries).

Is it purely a form of entertainment; paying a nominal fee for a few hours of fantasising about the 'what if?' possibilities - with no expectation of it actually happening?

Or are people really just dumb enough to think that this is the best
('easiest', 'fastest' etc) - or the only - way to get rich?

gotta pay the stupid tax

It's fun

I sometimes drop a dollar or two on those $1 tickets with the 5 grand jackpot. I do this maybe once a week, no more than twice.

How bad is that?

it's as bad as throwing a 1$ bill on the street every week.

Not really that big of a deal, but still retarded

'Bad' is too vague and subjective a term to really say anything about.

I've never bought a lottery ticket but I have bought scratch cards so I'll speak from that experience. It's a fun tiny piece of time wasting similar to buying a soda or candy. Plus I actually made 50 dollars out of 5 once which was enough to pay for the rest of my convenience store expenses that night!

If hate your job but it pays well you can afford to throw a few £ at the lottery in the hope (however unlikely) of escaping from the daily grind.

The dumb ones use it as a retirement plan. The others play it not intending to win. They drop a few dollars because they enjoy the thrill. It's gambling - it's fun.

I only play one type of lottery which has a guaranteed jackpot of at least 10 million. It was 86 million. I analyzed the previous winning numbers and picked out the most profitable combinations. It's pretty fun.

I did that yesterday and won $20 from $1.

Even if I net negative over the long term, it is still fun, so long as you accept it as merely entertainment.

I mean, some people still pay $.99 for songs on itunes, so why not?

That sounds pretty pseudo mathematical.

Mathfag here, it's completely pseudo.

when you play the lottery (the "big" one, not the kind of lottery held by the church during your local festivity) you are not paying to have a chance to win but you're paying to dream. If you're stressed like the average man (from work, family, shit like that) i think it is a nice relief to do that sometime.

Completely pseudo, gamblers fallacy

I don't play the lottery, but I'd guess those that do play for the high they get from it. It's fun to daydream about the possibility of telling your boss to fuck off.

Playing the lottery isn't about trying to get the money. It's about imagining what life would be like if you somehow actually managed to win


[spoiler]I buy one lottery ticket every few months so I can imagine what it would be like to be able to afford buying out all of the land for sale in a developing town that has hotels, malls, and sports stadiums, but very few other attractions[/spoiler]

I thinks it's rigged imho, I don't have the link to the article but some lady in NC won it like twice within a year. The odds of that happening are well.. Impossible really.

The odds of that happening is possible really

It's subjective.

If you treat it as entertainment, and get more out of it than you would buying something else, like alcohol, then it's not 'bad'. If you do it hoping to actually get anything out of it, it's an awful choice.

>Being this fucking bad at math.

Take an ordinary deck of cards. Make sure it's just the 52 cards. No jokers, no bullshit. Riffle shuffle it for a few minutes to make sure that it's utterly damn random, even though you only need to riffle it about 7 times to be mathematically 'random enough'. Now take your boring ordinary deck of cards, and from top to bottom lay them out in one single row on the table.

Congratulations. The odds of that exact ordering of cards appearing in a randomized deck is 1 in 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000. You have just created an order that has more than likely never been duplicated in the entire history of the universe.

According to your logic it's impossible for you to even put the cards on the table.

British lottery supports good causes and our olympic team.

Most lotteries in the US support education. It's still better to donate directly if that's what you want to do.

> that filename

...

+1

it's a tax on people who don't understand probability

they play to win but only i can win it, realistically. ;)

This, you're paying for the day-dream.

You can't really justify day-dreaming about winning the lottery if you don't have a ticket.

If say you're one of those people that buys 10 lines a week, then you are a sucker. Buying a ticket now and again is just buying that little thrill of lying in your bed just before you go to sleep thinking about what you would do with all that money.

I buy tickets every few weeks, maybe even once a month before I get round to checking them. I always buy when there is a multi million rollover.

I am a savvy investor with the rest of my money, but it will take another 15 years before I have enough to retire. Until then, I'll just keep buying that little day-dream, which in my eyes is well worth £2.

It's only $52
52 weeks in a year
you won't lose any shit

please don't ever fucking post about anything related to math again

I buy one whenever the jackpot is big enough to be newsworthy.
Never expect to win, but you can't win if you don't play, right?

I just sold furry sonic porn to some Norwegian fellow for $50. Literally anything is valued.

It makes sense when the expected value of playing it is positive, which is pretty rare because larger Jackpots increase the probability of a tie.

I don't believe the expected value has ever been positive, not even with the most recent record-breaking jackpot.

My national lottery (netherlands) has a subscription service where you get a free ticket if you sign up. You can cancel and resubscribe every month. This makes the expected value not even that bad (25% chance you get your money back). Of course it's still an illogical investment, but it's decent compared to other lotteries.

I do it for fun once or twice a year.
Then it's like a major sports event for me. I sit with a bear in front of the tv and see if "my team" makes it or not. And after that that I go drink a beer with friends and maybe tell them how close or how far off I was or what nice tits the lottery lady had.

I started playing the lottery about 2 years ago.

It started out as just an experiment to see how much money I would win and lose. For about a year I kept records on money spent on tickets and money won.

I found that after a year of playing I ended up breaking even. Some months I wouldn't win at all, then in others I would get 2 or 3 big wins. In the end it balances out though.

Now it's just a habit. I go for coffee once a week and pick up a ticket at the same time. I don't care if I win or lose, but it's a good way to break a 50 because I need 20s for training.

There are better ways to make money, but for limited effort a lottery ticket is a decent investment.

It is like religion, it gives them hope for something that will never happen

Same reason why planned vacations are always way more fun than going on a whim, regardless of quality. The anticipation of winning it big often justifies the small price that people pay. So to answer your question, no it's not a good way to make money, and yes it's absolutely a form of entertainment.

like I said, it's not a big deal, but you would still think somebody is retarded if he just threw a dollar away every week

Kek, i think i was the one who made that point a few months ago. Nice to see im not the only one thinking that way.

All that for a lottery ticket jeez man get a life seriously