The lottery is an arrangement in which a prize or other benefit is allocated by means of a process that relies largely on chance. This may involve selecting a winner in a game, filling a vacancy in a team among equally competing players or placing students or athletes into a particular educational institution. This is contrasted with a fair selection system, which assigns benefits to individuals by giving them the opportunity to compete in a process that is free from bias.
The modern state lottery began in the 15th century with towns in the Low Countries holding public lotteries to raise money for town fortifications and to help the poor. The word lotteries is derived from Middle Dutchlot, via calque on the French loterie “action of drawing lots”.
In colonial America, private and public lotteries were widely used to fund a wide variety of projects including churches, libraries, canals, roads and bridges as well as colleges and universities. Benjamin Franklin ran a lottery in 1748 to finance the creation of a militia to defend Philadelphia against the French and John Hancock held one in 1767 to build Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Lotteries were so widespread in the early colonies that George Washington once ran a lottery to raise money to build a road over a mountain pass in Virginia. Today, state-sponsored lotteries draw broad popular support and are a major source of state revenue. However, the growth in lottery revenues has slowed, prompting new approaches to lottery operations.
