Despite all the glitzy ads, there’s only a very small chance that you will win the lottery. You’re much more likely to be attacked by a shark, get hit by lightning or even die in a plane crash than win the jackpot. Nevertheless, many people play the lottery with the hope that they will improve their odds of winning by playing certain numbers on significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries or buying tickets every week or only choosing Quick Picks, where machines randomly select a group of numbers. These tips may help you increase your chances, but they don’t work as well as you might think.

The word “lottery” is most often used to refer to state-run contests with a high prize pool but low odds of winning (although finding true love and getting hit by lightning are also said to be essentially lottery-like). But a lottery can really mean any contest where a prize (money, property, or work) is offered and the winners are chosen at random. For example, some schools select students by lottery.

The first recorded lotteries to sell tickets with a chance of winning money were held in the Low Countries in the 15th century to raise funds for town fortifications and to help the poor. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Benjamin Franklin organized lotteries to raise money for various projects in the colonies, including a battery of cannons for defense of Philadelphia and rebuilding Faneuil Hall in Boston. These lotteries were widely considered to be a form of hidden tax, and the abuses that they sometimes involved strengthened arguments against them.