The lottery is a form of gambling in which people buy numbered tickets. Some of the numbers are then chosen by chance, and the people who have those tickets win a prize. It is also a phrase used to describe any situation that depends on luck or chance, such as which judges are assigned to a case.

The narrator of Jackson’s story describes how the village residents gather in the town square on an unspecified day for the annual lottery ritual. They exhibit the stereotypical small-town behavior of socializing warmly and gossiping. Children on summer break from school are the first to assemble, followed by adult men and women. The ceremony takes only two hours.

Although a lottery is an illegal activity in some countries, most states have lotteries. They raise money for public projects by selling tickets with a chance of winning cash or goods. Most state lotteries set up a government agency to run the games or license private firms for operation. The agencies then promote the games through a variety of media and encourage people to play. The resulting revenues have become a major source of revenue for many state budgets.

The purchase of lottery tickets cannot be accounted for by decision models that are based on expected value maximization. The mathematics shows that the tickets cost more than the expected winnings, and people who are maximizing expected utility would not buy them. However, people do buy them because they enjoy the excitement of winning and the fantasy of becoming wealthy.