>The standard argument of people who think that lotto is for suckers is based on expected return. They are taught at school that a rational investment is one with an expected value greater than the price paid. I have some problems with this argument, but I’ve never really calculated it before, so let us consider the numbers. //
This para to me says he's not really looked before at why he buys tickets, he's certainly not calculated his expected returns even though - as he says - he's a statistician. That seems a bit weird to me, like a mechanic that doesn't check his own oil or something.
So I think he now has a reason to tell people why he buys tickets but that perhaps before [and maybe still] there was some irrationality (humanity you might call it) in there too.
>I’ve also heard the belief that the lottery is a tax on poor people. I have a different view, that buying lottery tickets is perfectly rational for me. //
At the start he says this. And then, like others in this thread, says it's about hope and dreams - that seems contradictory in some sense. It's about hope beyond the mathematically expected financial return? The cost of doing the lottery for me exceeds the entertainment value it provides but the draw of the chance to "solve all my problems" is very strong.
Perhaps not a tax on the poor but a far less easily avoided irrational expense?
Aside: I also like the way he presents his calculation of expected return as if it's going to turn out that the lottery makes an ongoing loss and it's going to show that he was acting rationally all along (although it wouldn't show that of course because you have to have the argument first for the behaviour to be rational, don't you; otherwise it just happens to be coterminous with rational behaviour).