Whole Lotto Spendin' Going On

I was just in my local 7-Eleven, waiting behind a line of people buying lottery tickets.  Apparently, the Mega Millions jackpot is higher than ever--estimated at $363 million. What fascinated me was not that so many were buying tickets.  In fact, it was fairly rational activity (for lottery ticket buyers)--it's always a buck a ticket, so why not wait until there's a bigger payout.

What fascinated me was that so many--most, as far as I saw--were filling out these cards to pick their own numbers.  This instead of the other choice, which is to let the machine produce randomly generated numbers.  Filling out the lottery card isn't exactly onerous, but it does take some time.  Why bother?  Yet people were quite insistent.

I guess they figure there's almost no chance random numbers will win the jackpot.  They're correct.  Too bad they don't take that logic all the way.