The Lottery

[downbeatplumb]

I go to the casinos for the food. No kidding, in 25 years, I have put less than $10 in slot machines, and in both cases, it was money given me by my date to gamble with.

I literally find watching paint drying to be more interesting than a slot machine. But I realize it is a huge problem for others. A friend of my sister lost her home when her husband pissed away $120,000 in 2 years. She stuck with him, hell if I know why.

Well we know he liked putting things in slots.

[Ravenshire]

I don't have the money to spend on a ball set machine.

If you have a smart phone, you can get an app that will generate quick pick numbers.

Or, I'm sure you can find one on line.

[Jackalope]

Where are the excel whizzes? I know how to generate random numbers like the lottery. Problem is sometimes I get duplicates in the same row. The lottery doesn't allow that. What formula can I input to ensure I don't get duplicates in a single lottery combination?

You aren't going to get random numbers from Excel, or from anything else on a personal computer. They're pseudorandom - which essentially means "random enough for most purposes". But not this one.

[BlackMason]

If you have a smart phone, you can get an app that will generate quick pick numbers.

Or, I'm sure you can find one on line.

I can't do that. I have to recreate the lottery over the last 9 years. That's 937 draws. I need the power of a spread sheet program like excel.

You aren't going to get random numbers from Excel, or from anything else on a personal computer. They're pseudorandom - which essentially means "random enough for most purposes". But not this one.

I'll do a little research to find out how to negate pseudo randomness. Anyway I think it's feasible to use the closest thing to randomness. After all science works with models that aren't perfect. So long as they are close enough to approximate reality. So pseudo random is fine.