The lottery is a big game of chance with huge jackpots that draw people in. But it’s also a game of manipulation and deception that reflects society’s desire to win and the ugly underbelly of inequality and limited social mobility. Lottery has been around for centuries, from the Old Testament to Roman emperors who used it to give away slaves and property. It’s an ancient and inextricable human impulse.

The odds of winning a lottery prize aren’t as bad as you might think, and there are a few ways to improve your chances. Here are some tips:

Choose numbers that don’t repeat and stay away from those that have sentimental value. You can also try joining a group where you buy multiple tickets to improve your odds. However, beware that if you buy more tickets, the price of each ticket goes up. Using mathematical formulas, Romanian-born mathematician Stefan Mandel has discovered a way to improve your odds by counting the number of times each random digit appears on the outside of the ticket. He says that a cluster of singletons on a lottery ticket signals a winning ticket 60-90% of the time.

To keep the lottery profitable, states must pay out a respectable percentage of sales as prizes. But that reduces the share of the pool that can be used as revenue for things like education, the ostensible reason that states created lotteries in the first place. In addition, consumers aren’t clear on the implicit tax rate they’re paying.