No wonder she won a lottery.

It turns out that the value of buying a lottery ticket is not winning.

Why, he's trying to tell you he sold you the winning ticket.

I actually get phone calls from people who want to know what lottery numbers are going to win.

That same month, a lottery scandal threw the BMW brand into the limelight once again. Lottery officials in Shaanxi province rejected a winning ticket, calling it a fake and denying its bearer, a 17 year old security guard named Liu Liang, the grand prize of a 58,000 BMW and 120,000 yuan ( 14,510) in cash.

It turns out people think when they win the lottery their lives are going to be amazing.

Raffles did.

And economists forgive me, for those of you who play the lottery but economists, at least among themselves, refer to the lottery as a stupidity tax, because the odds of getting any payoff by investing your money in a lottery ticket are approximately equivalent to flushing the money directly down the toilet which, by the way, doesn't require that you actually go to the store and buy anything.

So CNN, a little while ago, wrote this interesting article on what happens to people when they win the lottery.

The Law on Lottery Games

The police finally stepped in and, after a careful investigation, announced that they had found the true criminal Yang Yongming, a private businessman whom the local lottery administration had contracted to organize ticket sales. Yang had conspired with the government officials directing the lottery, who were arrested for malfeasance, to fraudulently obtain the top prizes.

The reason is you never go and bother to ask the losers who also purchased lottery tickets and didn't end up winning the prize.

Have you bought a raffle ticket yet?

Do you still buy lottery tickets?

State lottery, señor?

Tom bought a lottery ticket.

I won a lottery.

This actually is a slip that one of the winners had, because the Tennessee lottery security officials were like, oh, no like, this can't be true.

But certainly I see your point that there can be some utility to buying a lottery ticket other than winning.

The problem with that view is like asking all the winners of lotteries, Have you won the lottery?

b. Sale of magazines and lottery tickets.

I don't want any lottery ticket!

Until the result of the race is declared official.

Tom won 10,000 in the lottery.

When was the last time that you saw extensive interviews with everybody who lost?

But the story didn't end when police officers managed to talk him down. News broadcasts covered his continued insistence that he did not forge his ticket, along with the lottery center's claims that their rejection of the ticket was legitimate.

So, this actually became very clear to me with the March 30, 2005 Powerball drawing, where, you know, they expected, based on the number of ticket sales they had, to have three or four second place winners those are the people who match five or six Powerball numbers.

Most of the funding was sourced from the National Lottery, with the balance funded by the government.

Murder's like a milliondollar lottery.

Beat it. I ain't buying no lottery tickets.

The average lottery buyer buys about 150 tickets a year, so the buyer knows full well that he or she is going to lose, and yet she buys 150 tickets a year. Why is that?

Why in the world would anybody ever play the lottery?

Would you like to shake the hand that bought that ticket?

Finding a decent man is more difficult than winning a lottery.

If I won the lottery, I'd buy a new car.

The whole ticket is only 4 pesos. It's a sure winner.

Buy a quarter of a ticket for 1 peso silver.

DG Well, no, it's a great point. It remains to be seen whether the joy of anticipation is exactly equaled by the amount of disappointment after the lottery. Because remember, people who didn't buy tickets don't feel awful the next day either, even though they don't feel great during the drawing.

And they all tell you, Yes, we have won the lottery.

Receipts from the concessions and the money from ticket sales.

Because the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.

Look, I can prove this to you here's a little lottery.

I know, because I've interviewed about 1,000 lottery buyers over the years.

Your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Be sure to hold all tickets.

One of them is winning the lottery. This is about 314 million dollars.