Here's the thing, not every project is a good one, let alone one dedicated to getting rich off of not working.
If you want to make money off of programming, you need to create a product/service and sell it. Or get investors. Or get money from advertising.
Basically, trying to game the lotto isn't a good way of making money. It may be computationally interesting but alas, many of the things that are interesting are not profitable. It is the way of the world.
If I am smart enough to think out algorithms that can beat lottosOriginally Posted by MutantJohn
, its not my fault that I get rich without working; mind you, I worked when I developed the algorithm
.
Not that I am justifying this project.
It's technically not against the rules to make such algorithms, though certainly if they worked, the makers of the lottery would look down upon you. Then there's those people who win by pure chance. Nothing wrong with that either.
I believe the point john is trying to make is that the games are made such that it is highly unprobable that anyone can make an algorithm that predicts the outcome and hence be able to guess right that way. If you succeed, then all the power to you. But it's a more guaranteed way to make money by creating and making your software commercial and selling it.
But you aren't smart enough to know that there are no algorithms that can bet lottos.If I am smart enough to think out algorithms that can beat lottos
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
An excellent point.
Lotteries use true randomness to pick their numbers. The numbers are typically selected by mechanical means, with numbered balls randomized by airflow. The balls are kept under close guard, and are often weight-matched to tight standards to ensure true randomness without favoring any particular set of numbers. There is really no algorithm that you can use to discover the perfect winning numbers. I'm sure if you analyzed all of the historical numbers, you'd find a very even distribution.
What can this strange device be?
When I touch it, it gives forth a sound
It's got wires that vibrate and give music
What can this thing be that I found?
That's not the only "lotto" that's available...
In some lottery games, it is possible to use probability theory to give yourself a higher chance of winning, but there is never a way to ensure than you almost always win since the nature of lottery is that it is random.
What kind of lotteries are those? Honest question. I never heard of anything like that before.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
Well, I mean... there's Bingo, roulette and dice. Not all of, especially Bingo, are uniformly random, but they are lotteries. Depending on their rules, distributions changes too.
If you draw a single ball from some machine, sure it's uniformly random. But if you pick N and add their sums, it's no longer uniformly random (it converges to a normal distribution).
There are too many variations of bingo for me to look upon. But assuming the traditional game played at charity halls and casinos, they are truly random. Dice are the same. Games like casino craps follow the exact same rules of uniformly distributed outcomes. Roulette is yet another game where hoaxes, based or not on gambler's fallacy, are plenty and, yes, yet another game where the outcomes are uniformly distributed.
EDIT: Some games do offer some sort of strategy. Yahtzee is an example. But these are definitely not lottery games, where the simple premise is to draw and match random numbers.
Last edited by Mario F.; 12-01-2014 at 03:46 PM.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
