Seth Godin recently wrote about seeing lottery elements in schools, sports, and on social media.

Actually seeing lotteries is actually more difficult than it sounds. 

For starters, lotteries are well disguised. If you bluntly told an Olympian that they were effectively a lottery winner, they might think you’re telling them their efforts didn’t matter, and feel offended. If you’re a lottery winner, maybe you’re the one that doesn’t want to feel like your efforts—the late nights studying, the weekends working, the yeras of practice—didn’t matter.

We also create useful beliefs to help improve our odds. You’ll gladly acknowledge other people’s bad luck, and yet you’ll want to teach your kid that they can influence the outcome. When you do this, you encourage them to print lottery tickets and improve the odds of them winning. If they don’t play, they won’t win.