Editing Luck (section)

==Social aspects==
[[File:Wheel of fortune.png|thumb|180px|[[Wheel of Fortune (Tarot card)|Wheel of fortune]] as depicted in Sebastian Brant's book, author [[Albrecht Dürer]]]]

===Games===
{{seemain|Game of chance}}
The philosopher Nicholas Rescher has proposed that the luck of someone's result in a situation of uncertainty is measured by the difference between this party's yield and expectation: λ = Y - E. Thus skill enhances expectation and reduces luck. The extent to which different [[game]]s will [[Game#Skill, strategy, and chance|depend on luck]], rather than skill or effort, varies considerably. For example, [[chess]] does not involve any random factors (beyond the determination of which player moves first), while the outcome of [[Snakes and Ladders]] is entirely based on random dice rolls. In [[poker]], especially games with a communal board, pure luck may decide a winning hand. Luck in games involving chance is defined as the change in a player's equity after a random event such as a die roll or card draw.<ref>{{cite web|last=Zare|first=Douglas|title=A Measure of Luck|url=http://www.bkgm.com/articles/Zare/AMeasureOfLuck.html|access-date=12 June 2013}}</ref> Luck is positive (good luck) if the player's position is improved and negative (bad luck) if it is worsened. A poker player who is doing well (playing successfully, winning) is said to be "running good".<ref>{{cite web|last=Miller|first=Ed|title=The Pitfalls of Running Good|url=http://www.cardplayer.com/cardplayer-poker-magazines/65765-mike-sexton-22-23/articles/18863-the-pitfalls-of-running-good|work=CardPlayer.com|access-date=11 April 2014|date=Nov 27, 2009|quote=I've always thought that one of the worst things that can happen to new poker players is for them to run really good right out of the gate. If they rack up a number of big wins early on, a couple of bad things can happen.}}</ref>

Almost all sports contain elements of luck. A statistical analysis in the book ''[[The Success Equation]]'' attempted to elucidate the differing balance between skill and luck with respect to how teams finished in the [[Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada|major North American sports leagues]]. This analysis concluded that, on a luck-skill continuum, the [[National Basketball Association|NBA]] had the most skill-dependant result while that of the [[National Hockey League|NHL]] was most luck-dependant.<ref>{{Citation|last=Vox|title=Why underdogs do better in hockey than basketball|date=2017-06-05|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNlgISa9Giw| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211029/HNlgISa9Giw| archive-date=2021-10-29|access-date=2018-07-02}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

===Lotteries===
{{main|Lottery}}
A defining feature of a lottery is that winners are selected purely by chance. Marketing and other discussions regarding lotteries often mention luck but tend to underplay the actual prospects of winning, which are usually millions to one against.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Stearns|first1=James M.|last2=Borna|first2=Shaheen|date=1995-01-01|title=The ethics of lottery advertising: Issues and evidence|url=https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00873735|journal=Journal of Business Ethics|language=en|volume=14|issue=1|pages=43–51|doi=10.1007/BF00873735|s2cid=154717674 |issn=1573-0697|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

===Means of resolving issues===
"Leaving it to chance" is sometimes a way of resolving issues for example, where there are two possible outcomes, flipping a coin may determine the outcome. This practice has gone on for thousands of years, a common contemporary example is the coin toss at the start of a [[sporting event]] which may determine who goes first.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The History of the Coin Toss {{!}} The Royal Mint|url=https://www.royalmint.com/stories/celebrate/the-history-of-the-coin-toss2/|access-date=2021-09-05|website=www.royalmint.com|language=en-GB}}</ref>

===Numerology===
{{Main|Numerology}}
{{See also|Triskaidekaphobia}}
Most cultures consider some numbers to be lucky or unlucky. This is found to be particularly strong in [[Culture of Asia|Asian cultures]], where the obtaining of "lucky" [[telephone number]]s, automobile [[license plate]] numbers, and [[address (geography)|household addresses]] (such as those which [[Chinese numerology|contain the digit 6 or 8]]) are actively sought, sometimes at great [[money|monetary]] expense.

[[Numerology]], as it relates to luck, is closer to an art than to a science, yet numerologists, astrologists or psychics may disagree. It is interrelated to [[astrology]], and to some degree to [[parapsychology]] and [[spirituality]] and is based on converting virtually anything material into a [[pure number]], using that number in an attempt to detect something meaningful about reality, and trying to predict or calculate the future based on lucky numbers. Numerology is [[folkloric]] by nature and started when humans first learned to count. Through human history it was, and still is, practiced by many cultures of the world from traditional [[fortune-telling]] to on-line [[psychic reading]]. Dudley describes numerology as, "the delusion that numbers have power over events."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dudley|first=Underwood|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/spec/019|title=Numerology or What Pythagoras Wrought|publisher=American Mathematical Society|year=1997|isbn=978-1-4704-5283-4|series=Spectrum|volume=19 |location=Providence, Rhode Island|doi=10.1090/spec/019 |s2cid=243070708 }}</ref>

===Science===
Different thinkers like [[Thomas Kuhn]] have discussed the [[role of chance in scientific discoveries]].
[[Richard Wiseman]] did a ten-year scientific study into the nature of luck that has revealed that, to a large extent, people make their own good and bad fortune. His research revealed that "Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, making lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, creating self-fulfilling prophecies via positive expectations, and adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."<ref name="Wiseman, R. 2003">Wiseman, R. (2003). The luck factor. London, UK: Random House.</ref> Researchers have suggested that good luck and good mood often co-occur (Duong & Ohtsuka, 2000)<ref>Duong, T.,&Ohtsuka, K. (2000). TheVietnamese-language SouthOaksGambling Screen for the Australian context. In J. McMillen, & L. Laker (Eds.), Developing strategic alliances: Proceedings of the 9th National Association for Gambling Studies Conference, Gold Coast, Queensland 1999 (pp. 161−171).
Kew, Australia: The National Association for Gambling Studies.</ref> and that people who believe themselves to be lucky are often comparatively happy and optimistic whereas people who believe themselves to be unlucky may feel comparatively anxious and depressed (Day & Maltby, 2003; Wiseman, 2003).<ref name="Wiseman, R. 2003"/><ref>Wiseman, R., & Watt, C. (2004). Measuring superstitious belief: Why lucky charms matter. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 1533−1541.</ref> Luck can also correlate with superstitious behaviors that increase opportunities of good fortune occurring like avoiding walking under ladders or blowing left and right for safe travels before crossing train tracks, which inadvertently increases your chances of seeing an oncoming train.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A rail safety superstition • TrackSafe |url=https://www.tracksafe.co.nz/safety/campaigns/a-rail-safety-superstition |access-date=2023-03-08 |website=www.tracksafe.co.nz}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Shortland |first=Edward |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/820719167 |title=Traditions and superstitions of the New Zealanders : with illustrations of their manners and customs |date=2011 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-10908-6 |location=Cambridge |oclc=820719167}}</ref>

Although previous studies have explored the antecedents and consequences of luck using attribution theory (e. g., Fischoff,
1976; Weiner et al., 1987),<ref>Fischoff, B. (1976). Attribution theory and judgment under uncertainty. In J. H.
Harvey, W. J. Ickes, & R. F. Kidd (Eds.), New directions in attribution research (Vol. 1, 421−452). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.</ref><ref>Weiner, B., Frieze, I., Kukla, A., Reed, L., Rest, S., & Rosenbaum, R. M.(1987). Perceiving the causes of success and failure. In Edward E. Jones, David E. Kanouse, Harold H. Kelley, Richard E. Nisbett, Stuart Valins, & Bernard Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behaviors pp. 95−120. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.</ref> personality variables (Darke & Freedman, 1997a;b),<ref>Darke, P. R., & Freedman, J. L. (1997a). The belief in good luck scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 2, 486−511.</ref> and more recently a cognitive priming approach (DeMarree et al., 2005; Kramer & Block, 2008) research on the underlying mechanism of how luck influences consumer judgment and behavior has been noticeably absent in the extant literature. Moreover, in much of this previous work, luck is manipulated in a way that is very likely to elicit positive affect as well. Thus, it is difficult to articulate whether the observed effects of luck are due to chronic beliefs about luck, temporary changes in how lucky people feel, or because of changes caused by the positive affect that is experienced. Their research showed that priming participants subliminally with luck-related stimuli made them feel luckier and happier. It was also found that the effects of priming luck using [[subliminal messages]] increased participants' estimates of the likelihood of favorable events, their participation in lotteries, the amount of money they invested in relatively risky financial options and these effects appeared to be mediated by temporary changes in perceptions of luck rather than by affect.<ref>DeMarree, K. G., Wheeler, S. C., & Petty, R. E. (2005). Priming a new identity: Self-monitoringmoderates the effects of nonself primes on self-judgments and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(5), 657−671.</ref><ref>Kramer, T., & Block, L. (2008). Conscious and non-conscious components of superstitious beliefs in judgment and decision making. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(6), 783−793.</ref>