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The loto has been ruined for me ever since Mr. Connors said the, "The lottery is a tax for people who are bad at math." Though, now I know it is a cliche, it was the first time I heard it, and I thought it was very clever, so it stuck with me.

I love math and hate taxes. Thus, I can never play the loto.

This is also why I love the story of Joan Ginther, who one multi-million dollar scratch offs 4 times. She is a former stats profession and the general assumption is that she used math the beat the 1980s randomness algorithms you mentioned. That is beating taxes by being good at math!

It is less a tax and more a pie in the sky investment with a very high potential upside and a really terrible ROI of 0.25.

Playing every 9th game (on average) costs me about $17 a year, which the things I learned about pseudorandom numbers and genetic algorithms more than makes up for it, for me.

Have you heard of the companies which used to figure the odds on the big lotteries and then buy up all of the numbers (or as many as they can). I understand it has been successfully accomplished in several cases, the largest variable being the odds of more than one person winning and having to split the pot.

And yes, I see your point. Especially since it turned into a fun programming project. Doubly so if you happen to support the things that lotteries fund (often public education, etc).