In the financial lottery, players pay for a ticket, select a group of numbers or have machines randomly spit out combinations of numbers, and win prizes if enough of those numbers match those drawn by a machine. The odds of winning are usually very slim, but there are a few strategies that might improve your chances of scoring a jackpot. One is to buy more tickets, and another is to play fewer numbers; but both of these options require an understanding of the law of large numbers.

Lottery grew popular in America during the nineteen-sixties, as the country wilted under the weight of inflation, the cost of the Vietnam War, and a ballooning population. State budgets began to shrink, and it became increasingly difficult to balance state coffers without raising taxes or cutting services that people viewed as essential.

To counter the growing anti-tax sentiment, pro-lottery advocates shifted their message. They stopped arguing that the games would float most of a state’s budget and started to claim that they’d cover a single line item, typically education but sometimes elder care or public parks. This approach made it easier to sell the idea of gambling, as long as voters could see that the money wouldn’t mainly benefit white-collar professionals.

But despite this shift, the underlying logic has not changed. As Cohen points out, the fact is that lottery sales rise when incomes decline and unemployment increases. Moreover, advertising is heavily concentrated in neighborhoods that are disproportionately poor, black, and Latino.