I'm sure that's true down here in Texas too.  And, as predicted by every cynic in the state, the money doesn't seem to be finding its way into the school systems as promised either.

A local conservative radio host referred to the lottery as "Taxes for people who are bad at math".

Any tax money, whether it is speeding tickets, social security, lottery profits etc always end up in the same cash bucket.  Any government "we're going to fuck your wallet" initiative has always historically been argued to be for schools.  And people are stupid enough to believe it every time.

Emmeran wrote:

I'll admit to buying a lottery ticket when the fools I work with create a pool, simply so that on the off chance the pool hits I won't get left behind.

From a mathematics standpoint, when a lottery gets to that "triple rollover" ridiculously high amount, buy two tickets with different numbers.  You have almost no chance anyway, but the difference between buying two tickets and two hundred is almost 0.

I don't care and fully understand the odds.  All I care is I don't want to be left standing on statistics when everyone else leaves the company en masse.