fear-of-math
Explanation
The Joke
A man arrives at a support group for people with a fear of mathematics. The group leader welcomes everyone and then, before they begin, asks if anyone is interested in lottery tickets or a whole life insurance policy.
The Humor
The joke is that lottery tickets and whole life insurance are both products that exploit mathematical ignorance. Anyone with a solid understanding of probability and expected value would know that lottery tickets are a losing proposition on average and that whole life insurance is generally considered a poor financial product compared to alternatives like term life insurance plus investing.
The support group leader is preying on exactly the people who would be most vulnerable to these bad deals -- people who are afraid of math and therefore unlikely to calculate the expected returns. It's a fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario. The comedy comes from the instant reveal that the "support group" is actually a scam targeting the mathematically anxious, which also serves as a commentary on how real-world financial predators exploit innumeracy.