Lottery Database

[bigroo]

Hi All,

I have been approached by a friend who plays the Texas lottery every week, all the 5 games, and asked about creating a Lottery database to help predict the weekly lottery numbers.

I can create the database to hold the draws each week for a particular game played on a day. I also want to go out to the website and download the prior numbers from the previous drawns for the different games, so for this I thought about creating a table for each game to hold the numbers.
But I guess my question is what type a calculations would you perform on the numbers to maybe narrow down the odds somewhat.

I had thoughts of the following:

1. Count frequency of times that each number has been drawn.
2. Show top 10 popular numbers and the less drawn numbers.

From there I am unsure what else to look at, does anyone have any ideas......There is commerical software out there, just wondering what they would do as actions performed on the number.

Thanks

[mjsabin]

You would need to use to Probability Theory, Im not sure but try looking for info and see if it helps you.

[HMEpartsmanager]

Be aware also, that there 'sometimes' can be other variables that are not known to the end user of the drawing. Such as having a mini-lottery before the drawing to determine which machine will be used, or which set of balls will be used, etc...

IOW, it is not always a given that the same machine and same set of balls are used each and every drawing.

Machine #9 may have more air pull that Machine #7, and even though the balls are weighted and checked for calibration, it is an unknown what their tolerance is allowed to be. Ball Set # 12 may be on the lighter side of the calibration weight, and Ball Set # 4 may be on the heavier side of the calibration. :-)

But I get what your friend is trying to do in the overall sense of things.

[bigroo]

Hi mjsabin and HMEpartsmanager,

You both have some good points there to which I did not consider.
As far as the "Probability Theory" is concerned, I would not know how to bring that concept into the database. I google "Probability Theory" and I was surprised what documentation is out there and what the theory is behind it.

I think for now I will just create the shell to house the tables for the previously drawn numbers and look for the popular numbers and less popular for now.
Maybe someone will know how to incorporate more of the science into this into the database.

I will discuss my findings with my friend and go from there.

Thanks