Americans spent more than $80 billion on lottery tickets in 2016 -- more than they spent on books, movie tickets, music, video games, and sports tickets -- combined. The reason why is clear: Lotteries offer the chance of striking it rich. Plenty of jackpots in recent years have offered hundreds of millions of dollars.
There's a problem, though: While the potential payoff may be astronomic, the chance of winning it is microscopic. The odds of winning the Powerball or Mega Millions grand prize are, respectively, 1 in 292,201,338 and 1 in 302,575,350. There are about 327 million people in America, so it's almost like randomly picking one resident as the winner.
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