10 Myths About Lotteries

Here are 10 popular myths about lotteries.

Big lottery jackpots have inspired quite a few tall tales over the years.
Here are 10 popular myths about lotteries.
Number 10. Your chances of being killed by lightning are better. Annually, winners of million-dollar plus lottery prizes typically number over 1 thousand, while fewer than 100 people a year are the victims of fatal lightning strikes.
Number 9. Some stores are lucky. There are outlets that sell more winning tickets than others, but a math expert ran the numbers and determined that luck has nothing to do with it. Usually it comes down to the fact that some places dispense a greater number of tickets in general.
Number 8. Picking 7, 11, and a birthday is the best route. Actually, it’s among the worst as lots of people do it. That means if you do end up with a winning ticket you’ll likely have to share the jackpot with many others.
Number 7. The lottery zeros in on the poor. A survey performed in New Mexico in the mid 1990s showed that ticket sales spanned income brackets fairly evenly. The only notable exception was in the 100 thousand a year and up group.
Number 6. More players mean lowered odds of winning. It doesn’t matter how many tickets are purchased, as people are playing for matching numbers, not against one another. Every ticket buyer picks from the same fixed group of options.
Number 5. There’s always a winner. Some weeks, hard though it is to fathom, nobody takes home the prize. The money most often rolls into the next drawing jackpot.
Number 4. When a winner dies, the payments stop. Part of the jackpot-claiming process is typically the selection of a beneficiary. If one wasn’t named, the money goes to the estate of the deceased.
Number 3. If a number hasn’t been picked in a while, it will be soon. Drawings are completely random, so there’s no saying which number will come up when.
Number 2. Studying winning numbers of the past can help. Again, random is random. Even if some balls have a history of floating to the top more often than others, there’s no guarantee that they will continue to do so.
Number 1. There’s no way to be sure lotteries aren’t fixed. State lottery agencies are under a great amount of scrutiny and have several security measures in place. Among them are regular number-picking machine checks and ball weigh-ins.
What other lottery myths do you know?