It's Treats for the Pool On Halloween Night!

The lottery pool is back to its winning ways - albeit in M & M size - pulling in $12 on two successful pick groups last night. We got the powerball right in those two, but unfortunately didn't match any other numbers in those groups. The multiplier was a measly 2x so that didn't help our earnings either. Still that boosts our cash reserve back up to $92 and since nobody else the won the jackpot it now climbs to $62 million. We'll be greedy and hope nobody wins it again this Saturday and we'll be in Wednesday for a what will be a jackpot that will no doubt draw tantalizingly close to $100 million.

I continue to tweak the spreadsheet that analyzes the numbers. (If statistical analysis bores you? Skip to the last paragraph.) I'm working on a section that asks the question, "In how many instances does a particular number getting picked within a certain number of drawings?" I already throw out any 5 that have been picked in the previous drawing since statistically that rarely happens - in other words if 10 gets picked it gets picked again in the next drawing (yes I know both 10 AND 11 got picked back to back recently - but again, that rarely happens). Getting rid of just 5 of those, geometrically increases our odds from picking any of the standard 55 numbers. So the more numbers we can potentially eliminate - the better our odds. In other words it's easier to pick 5 right from 50 then it is 55. If I can use the spreadsheet to look back and see if particular numbers don't appear to repeat within 2 or more drawings? Then that's many more numbers I can throw out for our picks.

I was also pleased with the fact that the spreadsheet got the powerball right in two sets. I threw out a full 20 numbers so it definitely had a better chance of picking the right one among 22 then it did 42 numbers for the powerball - and it paid off.

Payments and banked balances are up to date as of yesterday. Thanks! John