People buy lottery tickets because they want to win. But there’s also an inextricable human impulse to gamble. Those impulses are strong enough to make a huge dent in our economy and society. The fact is that we spend over $80 Billion on lottery tickets a year — money that could have gone toward building an emergency fund or paying off debt. This is money that could have helped a lot of people, especially those struggling with low incomes.
Lotteries have been around a long time. They were used in ancient Israel to distribute property and slaves and in Roman times as an entertaining way of giving away goods and services at Saturnalian feasts. In colonial America, lotteries financed many public projects, including paving streets, constructing wharves, and building churches. Privately organized lotteries raised funds for Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, King’s College (now Columbia), and William and Mary. Benjamin Franklin even sponsored a lottery to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British.
It’s possible to win the lottery if you know how to play smartly. The key is to cover a wide range of numbers and avoid using the same group of numbers over and over again. It’s also important to be aware that it is very rare for the same number to appear consecutively in a draw. Romanian-born mathematician Stefan Mandel won the lottery 14 times and developed a strategy that he shared with the world. He recommends selecting numbers that start and end with different digits, like the seven that won the Mega Millions jackpot in 2016.