Page 39 - Unlikely Stories 1

Your Lucky Numbers

house always wins, and human behavior is so predictable that we can
estimate ticket sales with ninety-five percent accuracy based on the
number of roll-overs; and that’s where those estimations for the
value of the next draw’s jackpot come from: people like me. Each of
the thousands of retailers selling tickets makes very little on each one,
but being an outlet pulls in customers who buy other things, as well,
and the shopkeepers share in the jackpot when they sell a big winner.
Thus they are a motivated sales force, costing the state only the price
of a printer and online connection for each outlet. That makes an
efficient business run smoothly with a good profit assured by fixed
costs and steady demand. You have some experience of those
variables with your own cottage industry, Ty.”
“It does sound routine, the way you put it.”
“And it has been for many years. Its success, unfortunately, is
based on the ticket buyers not really grasping the reality of their
chances; thus it has, with some justice, been described as a tax on the
poor, who are the majority of lottery players. Their relative quotient
of superstition to mathematical knowledge is rather high, compared
to better-educated people whose level of economic desperation is
relatively lower. If most lottery players realized how low their odds of
winning were, they would not be players: yes, someone is going to
win, but almost certainly not any specific person. And all those
specific persons have, like second marriages, allowed hope to
triumph over experience. Furthermore, that hope is magnified by a
sort of syncretism with every kind of irrational belief they have about
their inherent luck, their ability to magically choose a winning string
of numbers and, way too often, their ability to invoke divine
intervention. The irony is obvious: each player, to some extent,
craves supernatural control over the numbers drawn, but would be
outraged to discover someone else had been able successfully to exert
such black magic or the power of prayer to win.”
Bernie relaxed a bit more as they crossed the state line.
“But that ignorance, unreason and childish faith has another
aspect, one which spells trouble for the lottery as an ongoing
mechanism for raising revenue and creates personal danger for the

38