The casting of lots has a long history, as illustrated in the Old Testament, where Moses was instructed to take a census and divide land by lot; Roman emperors used it to give away property and slaves; and Benjamin Franklin sponsored a lottery to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British. The first public lotteries distributing prize money occurred in the Low Countries in the 15th century, to raise money for town fortifications and other projects.

Today, the vast majority of states run lotteries. Each state enacts laws to establish the lottery, delegates a public agency or corporation to operate it, and typically begins with a limited number of relatively simple games. It then expands its operations and game selection, often under pressure to generate sufficient revenues.

Several issues arise from this practice, but one of the most significant is that the promotion of gambling may have negative consequences for poor people and problem gamblers. Furthermore, state lotteries are run as businesses, and their advertising is designed to persuade people to spend money on tickets.

Most players choose their own numbers, but some use “quick pick” and allow the ticket machine to select random numbers. This method tends to produce more balanced subsets than manual methods because it eliminates the effect of individuals choosing their own numbers, as would occur if, for example, they chose birthdays or other personal identifiers. The fact that the plot shows approximately similar counts for each cell suggests that this is a fairly unbiased result.