Lottery:
A gambling game or method of raising money in which a large number of tickets are sold and a drawing is held for prizes. Also, anything whose outcome appears to be determined by chance: Life is a lottery.
Lottery has become an important source of state revenue in recent years, largely because it is popular and can be controlled to avoid the appearance of a hidden tax. State governments that rely on lottery revenues face the political challenge of increasing them as their budgets are squeezed.
Despite criticisms that lottery games are addictive and tend to disproportionately benefit those who already gamble, the popularity of state lotteries persists. In addition, the fact that many lottery players are low-income people and that they play at lower rates than those who do not gamble may explain why so few states have abolished them.
A number of other problems surround the lottery: the skepticism of claims of high jackpots; the difficulty of regulating it without imposing heavy burdens on state governments; the fact that most lottery winners take the prize in annual installments over 20 years, which causes inflation and taxes to dramatically diminish their value; and the tendency for lotteries to appeal to compulsive gamblers by presenting misleading information about winning odds.
The word lottery comes from the Latin sortilegij, meaning “drawing of lots” (or in other words, drawing a name). To qualify as a lottery, the competition must involve three elements: consideration, chance, and prize. Consideration can be anything, from a cash prize to a new car. The chance part of a lottery involves the probability of winning, and that can be assessed by charting the “random” numbers on the outside of a ticket. Look for a group of singletons, which indicates the possibility of a winning ticket.
