Members of the Math Department can teach us all how ridiculous lotteries are as a way for individuals to use their money. But it takes a historian to explain why people keep buying lottery tickets nonetheless, and how and why our governments promote them. One of our grad students, Jon Cohen, has been doing just this of late. You will enjoy seeing his opinion piece in The Hill as well as his discussion of the issues on BackStory. These arise from his dissertation work on lotteries.

Read the opinion piece in The Hill.

Listen to the discussion on BackStory.