Lotteries

To my mother, she defines lotteries as “using ‘small money’ to bet for big money”. The chances of striking the lottery are very slim unless you are very lucky. She would rather save the money spent on the lotteries for the year. At the end of the year, she would tell herself that she actually “struck” the amount she saved.

She reasoned out why the chances of striking the lottery (as in the top three prizes and not the consolation prizes) are 1/1500000. There are 4.5 million people in Singapore (estimated). If everyone buys a lottery ticket (some buy more than 1) so the chances are so slim, yet addiction caused many people to buy the lottery. They do not see logic anymore, but now they just see an “opportunity” to strike quick gold.

Take the Singapore advertisement for example (A father coaxing his daughter for her piggy bank), after the advertisement, there is a sentence. “Often, the people who really suffer from problem gambling aren’t the gamblers”. I agree with this, as usually, the gamblers have already progressed to the state of no return, and they will just keep gambling and never notice that they are near bankruptcy.

References
My mother
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chbjc-XDKLw