I've known people who's brains overheat when i tell them that when choosing a lotery ticket number,

@BlueSkyKing there's an interesting practice that my girlfriend, who is in Peru, was telling me about. workers form these groups where everyone puts, lets say, 5% of they pay, or like 20$ or something and each week one person gets it. there's nothing random about it, they chose in advance who's turn it is. lotteries are the same but with someone skimming from the top.

@reflectingmonkey It’s gambling and the advantage is always with the house. A study of previous results don’t increase your chances. When I gambled, it was playing the ponies. That’s different.

@reflectingmonkey That used to be a pretty big thing in the UK when I was a lot younger. There was a name for it that I can no longer recall.

Don't know why it stopped. Probably went "out of fashion"🤷‍♂️

@room101 in a way this system equates to savings. it takes discipline to save 20$ or 100$ a week and not go back 2 days later and spend it, maybe its easier for some people to put a 20 in a hat every week and then once in a while "win" the content of the hat.

@reflectingmonkey It was. I remember my parents budgeting for when their windfall would arrive. Of course, unlike a lottery, the windfall did arrive lol.

@BlueSkyKing Well, hardly a "tax".

You have to pay taxes.

You do not have to gamble!

I've just noticed I should have worded my opening sentence above a bit more clearly. It was not the Lottery company that encouraged false claims to predict the results, of course, but the existence of the Lottery - and the gullibility of those ticket-buyers who cannot understand the game's random nature. You don't need be a mathematician to know the odds are stacked extremely high against you, and that tricks like regular numbers will never work.