I didn’t win the lottery last night. Again.

In fact, I have yet to experience the joy of winning the lottery. It only recently occured to me to track how many losing lottery tickets I buy. They are now sitting in a bag in a box, being stored to the inevitable day when I get the urge to count, photograph and scan them, tallying the net expense on fruitless hopes, write a longer article about the experience, post it on flickr and here on this site, and then throw them all away.

I know the mathematical odds are stacked ever-so-high against me actually winning. I know purchasing a ticket is sheer, ridiculous irrationality. I will sometimes think for a couple of minutes over which $0.89 candy bar to buy, debating the various sumptuous flavors (caramel, nougat, peanut butter, peppermint, pretzel…) that each bar brings to the pallate. But I will spend almost no time thinking about basically throwing away $1 on a piece of paper that will be looked at briefly and then thrown into the trash in less than 24 hours (ah, but I’m saving them now).

The crux of the issue is the appeal of the improbable chance, the incredibly slight chance of spending $1 (almost meaningless) and getting $172 million (slightly more than meaningless). The numbers just don’t work, although if a priori I am going to risk $1 on the lottery, it makes sense to do it for larger lotteries.

But I still buy them all the time. I recognize the irrationality. But hey, that’s life :)