ARM Club 3/TheARMClub_PDCD3.iso/mag_discs/15/lottery/!Lottery/!Help

Text File | 1995-03-08 | 12KB | 261 lines

!Help file for !Lottery (version 1.10 26th Feb 1995)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shareware ©1994 Paul Vigay

Conditions of Use:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This application is SHAREWARE and may be copied freely subject to the
following conditions being obeyed at all times.
 - Copyright and all rights remain the property of Paul Vigay (the
author)
 - All files are copied in their entirety without alteration. The only
exception to this rule is the !Lottery.data.Results file which may be
distributed on it's own. This is the file in which the draw results
are stored.
 - Usage of this application is entirely at the users own risk. No
responsibility will be taken for any loss or damage, financial or
otherwise which may arise from usage of this application. (ie. if you
spend all your money and don't win, don't blame me)
 - You can register yourself by sending me a donation of £5.00 and in
return you will be eligible to receive free upgrades as and when I
produce them. in exchange for a blank (800k) disc and SAE.)
 - If you use this program and it wins you stacks of money, any
donations (such as RISC PC's/Land Rover Discovery's) should be send to
the author at the address below, where they will be gratefully
received. :-)

Purpose
~~~~~~~
To win loads of money - quite simple really! Although it's probably
impossible to predict the outcome of Saturday night's ball juggling, I
have won £10 consecutively in draws 5, 6 & 7, £20 in draw 9, £10 in
draws 10 & 14 and £20 in draws 13 & 15, using this program. (Draws 1-4
took place before I wrote !Lottery) Now, if I could just tweak it to
guess all six winning numbers instead of three......

Use
~~~
Simply double-click on the !Lottery application to load the program
onto the icon bar. This icon only has two options on it's menu; Info
and Quit - both self-explanatory.

To activate the program click SELECT on it's icon to open the 'main'
window.

This will display a window containing a number of things:-

At the top of this (Main) window is a blue status bar. This tells you
what the program is currently up to. To the right of this is the date
of the  current set of results.

To the right of the seven results are left and right direction icons.
Clicking SELECT on these lets you step backwards and forwards through
the results database in order to view previous weeks results. The
number between the two icons is the week number of the displayed set
of results.

Below the results is a graph showing a cumulative plot of all previous
results, indicating how many times each number has come up. The
numbers on the left of the chart (Y axis) show the minimum and maximum
number of times each number has come up. This chart automatically
updates itself when you add new results.

To the right of the graph are various graphical icons with which to
control  the program. These are as follows (from top to bottom):-

Add new results
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click SELECT on the top icon to the right of the graph. The date and
results icons will be blanked in order for you to enter new results,
as revealed on Saturday nights. If you make a mistake or decide you
didn't want to add new results after all, pressing ESCAPE will cancel
and return to 'Browse' mode. The date doesn't specifically have to be
in any format - it's purely for your reference when viewing previous
weeks results.

The results are only added to the database when you press return after
entering the bonus number. Until then, you can cancel adding by
pressing ESCAPE.

N.B. (version 1.09+above) You can enter numbers by clicking on the
relevant number in the 'payslip' window (which opens automatically
when you add results).

You can edit previous weeks results (although it's unwise to, unless
you made a mistake) by moving to the result you want and then clicking
in the relevant icon. Make the change and keep pressing return until
you get to the bonus number. Again, pressing return on the bonus
number will save the changed results back in the correct position in
the file.

N.B. The results are actually stored as a text file within the
!Lottery application. They can be loaded into a word processor and
printed out if required. However, if you decide to alter them, make
sure you keep the same format. The six digit number in the second line
of the file is the number of results stored. It should always be six
digits long, padded with leading zeros. Likewise, each result below
ten should be preceded with a leading zero.

Setting the random seed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Of course, with lotteries being completely random, there's no chance
of predicting the numbers with any deal of accuracy (or is there???)
Clicking SELECT on the second option down lets you alter the seeding
given to the random number algorithm inside !Lottery. For example you
could enter someones birthday, or enter a number, or just set the
numbers to completely random. If you enter someones birthday, !Lottery
will calculate the number of days since today and their birthday and
then use that number to set the random seed inside the computer. Enter
the date in the following format:-

             DD MMM YYYY     eg. 17 Jan 1995 or 01 Dec 1994
                   When you press return, the 'number' icon will
automatically be set to the number of days between the date you supply
and todays date. Alternatively, you can enter a number directly for
'number'. In this case the date will be cleared and the number entered
will be used as the seed.

- Click on 'Search' to try and find a random seed which will produce
the currently viewed draw results as a result of seven consecutive
random numbers. This will start at the value contained in 'Number' and
keep going until either a) it reaches 2E9 or b) you get fed up and
press ESCAPE to stop it. It's extremely unlikely that this will ever
find a suitable seed, but I put this feature in 'just for the hell of
it'.

Other options are getting !Lottery to favour certain ranges of
numbers, such as high, low, medium etc. or to bias the prediction in
favour of either numbers that have come up frequently before, or
numbers that haven't been drawn before.

On versions 1.09+, the 'Stats' bias will bias it's numbers towards
those favoured in the 'Statistical Analysis' window.

Making a prediction
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Having fiddled about with setting the seed (above) or not, clicking
SELECT on the third icon down will actually make a prediction of six
numbers for you. If the numbers win you *mega bucks*, please don't
forget who wrote the program for you....

From version 1.04 onwards, each time you run the program, each set of
guesses is stored automatically as a text file (!Lottery.data.guesses)
inside the !Lottery application. This guesses file not only stores
each set of six numbers, but also the various weighting factors and
seeding values that may have been selected. If you click in one of the
predicted number icons, you can add you own predictions which will
also be added to this file when you press ENTER on either number 6 or
the bonus number (leave blank if entering a prediction). This file can
be handy to print out and use as a handy reference to check off your
numbers as they are drawn. (However, sersions v1.08+ allow you to
import this file back into !Lottery in order to automatically check
for any wins - simply drag the file into the main lottery window.

Frequency Analysis
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clicking on the bottom icon (to the right of the graph) will display a
bar chart of the numbers in order of how frequently they have come up.
This lets you see which numbers have come up more than others, or
haven't come up at all yet.

Versions 1.05 and above have an additional 'week by week' analysis
feature. Click MENU in the frequency analysis window and a menu option
(weekbyweek) will be given. If you click on this, the analysis window
will change to display a chart showing each set of numbers in week
order. This can be handy to see if similar numbers show up in
consecutive weeks. To change back to the frequency chart, click MENU
again inside the weekbyweek window.

Versions 1.07 and above have the following menu available from any of
the 'Analysis' windows:
 Week by week:  Displays a week by week analysis of results so far.
                - Useful for spotting trends or repeated sequences.
                N.B. Clicking anywhere in the table will display the
                relevant date.
 Frequency:     Displays the 'Frequency analysis' window, containing
                each number, sorted in frequency order.
 Statistics:    Displays a window containing various statistics such
                as frequent sets of numbers, distribution of numbers
                and various proportions of numbers.
                (If there are more than 4 sets of duplicated numbers,
                you can click on the '⇩⇩⇩' and '⇧⇧⇧' icons in order
                to go down and up the list)

Versions 1.09+ also includes an additional 'pattern' option from the
analysis window which is basically the 'week by week' window, shrunk
down to provide a colourful pattern of results, which can be used to
view any distinct patterns which may start to appear after numerous
draws.

In addition, versions 1.09+ also automatically create a Stats file in
text format. This is saved as !Lottery.data.Stats and can be loaded
into a word processor to print it out.

Printing your payslips (v1.09 onwards)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bottom (printer) icon allows you to print out the actual payslips
via the standard RISC OS printer driver application. Simply click
SELECT on this icon and follow the on screen instructions.
 'Abort' will stop the entire print run at any point. Closing the
         window also has this effect.
 'Skip'  will jump to the next payslip, missing out the current one.
 'OK'    will print the next payslip.

The printer margins can be adjusted by clicking 'Adjust' on the print
icon. You can enter two values for the top and left margin indents, to
align the payslips within your particular printer. All values should
be in millimeters. This facility is mainly to enable you to compensate
for the distance between the margins in the RISC OS printer drivers
and the actual edge of the paper.

Checking your predictions (v1.08 onwards)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By dragging a previous 'Guesses' file into any !Lottery window (or the
iconbar), you can check the entries against the results displayed in
the main browser window. If you have any winning combinations, the
winning entries will be displayed. If 4 or more numbers are matched
*** will be displayed in red next to the display.

Future Enhancements/Bugs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As far as I have tested it, there are no bugs present. If, however you
find what you think is a bug, please contact me, giving details of
what you were doing immediately prior to discovering the bug.

At present there is no facility to directly delete previous results.
However, results may be deleted by loading the 'results' file (within
!Lottery) into !Edit or !Zap and manually deleting the relevant line.
Don't forget to update the results counter in the second line of the
results file, making sure that it remains six digits long.

As the lottery progresses, I hope to add more analytical functions in
order to spot any mathematical correlations between the sets of
results. Watch out for updates. If someone has the details, it would
also be interesting to see how the results correlate against the two
lottery machines and two sets of balls.

My BBS (details below) also has a dedicated National Lottery area
where people can discuss various aspects of the National Lottery. When
logged on, just type *LOTTERY#

Of course there are probably many other options/enhancements I could
make, so if you think of something you think I could add, please
contact me.

Contacting the author
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
!Lottery was written by Paul Vigay, who can be contacted at:

                104 Manners Road,
                Southsea,
                Hants.,
                PO4 0BG
                England

or via my BBS: [phone] (viewdata,7E1) - just mail the sysop.

or via Email:  [e-mail]
                or Arcade/World of Cryton BBS

Good luck and please enjoy :-)