What can we learn from lottery spending?
What can we learn from where people buy their lottery tickets — and how much they spend? “City Digits: Local Lotto,” a project from the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT, is exploring this question with the help of Brooklyn high school students who live in low-income neighborhoods where lottery spending is significant. “Through their participation in City Digits: Local Lotto, high school students have the opportunity to use data they gathered and explored as evidence to support and voice their ideas about the lottery and its impact on their neighborhoods,” says Sarah Williams, director of the Civic Design Data Lab and assistant professor of urban planning at MIT. “In today’s data-driven society, the ability to work with and analyze data will be an essential tool for these students when pursuing a variety of careers or social justice initiatives. And from transportation planning to allocation of health care funding, the ability to work...