A lottery is a game of chance in which participants pay a small sum of money for a chance to win a prize, often a large sum of cash. The winners are chosen by drawing lots, and the prizes are usually sponsored by governments or organizations as a way of raising funds. Lotteries have wide appeal among the general public, and many people play for fun. Some individuals have achieved huge winnings in the lottery, such as Romanian-born mathematician Stefan Mandel, who won 14 times before finally settling for $1.3 million.
The casting of lots has a long history in human culture, but lottery-style games for material gain are more recent. The first recorded public lotteries to award monetary prizes were held in the Low Countries in the 15th century to raise funds for town fortifications and to help the poor. Today, some countries offer lottery tickets for everything from housing units in subsidized housing projects to kindergarten placements at reputable public schools. In the United States, the winner is given a choice between receiving a lump sum or annuity payments over several years. Whichever option a winner takes, the amount of the prize will be significantly smaller than the advertised jackpot because of income taxes withholdings.
The purchase of lottery tickets cannot be accounted for by decision models based on expected value maximization, because the ticket cost is greater than the expected benefit. However, other models based on utility functions defined on things other than the lottery outcome can account for this risk-seeking behavior.