"Obviously, people will focus on people who win," said John Allen Paulos, a Temple University mathematician. "All the same dumb sticks who did the same thing [and lost] are invisible." Author of a bestselling book, "Innumeracy," Paulos says lotteries have always owed their appeal to people's loose grip of math. Paulos recalled a line from Voltaire: "Lotteries are a tax on stupidity." Paulos once tore up a Powerball ticket on the eve of a drawing in front of an audience. "They all gasped as if I just slashed the Mona Lisa," he said. To a mathematician, the lottery is a...
