A lottery is an arrangement whereby prizes are allocated to individuals by means of a process which relies wholly on chance. It is not reasonably practicable to prevent a substantial proportion of people who wish to participate in such arrangements from doing so, and there is no reason why a state should be prevented from establishing a lottery where it believes that the proceeds will benefit the community.
Americans spend $80 billion per year on lotteries. Some people play for pure enjoyment while others believe the lottery is their last, best, or only chance at a better life. They don’t always understand the odds or how the games work, so they buy all sorts of quote-unquote systems that are not based on statistical reasoning and try to find lucky numbers, stores, times of day, and types of tickets. Unfortunately, even the smallest errors in their strategy can greatly reduce the likelihood of winning, and they can end up a few years later bankrupt because they did not have any emergency savings or debt repayment plans in place.
While the casting of lots to make decisions and determine fates has a long record in human history (including several examples in the Bible), public lotteries that award money as a prize are much more recent, with the first recorded ones occurring in the Low Countries during the 15th century. Initially, the idea was to raise funds for town fortifications and for the poor, as is evident from records of a lottery at Bruges in 1445.
