The lottery plays on humans' natural disposition to interpret absurdly large numbers. I think if people could visually see their chances and relative expenses, the amount of people spending would decrease drastically.
By the way, that comic doesn't have accurate statistics.
"Your actual odds of winning the lottery depend on where you play, but single state lotteries usually have odds of about 18 million to 1 while multiple state lotteries have odds as high as 120 million to 1."
Lottery CalculatorSo anyone want to spend money guessing which blade of grass in your local park is special?