Hi,
I just finished to scan 1 million groups of random 34 drawings in 100 drawings. This test took me more than 7 hours. I got 246 groups of 34 drawings with 3 numbers missing, and 2 groups of 34 drawings with 4 numbers missing.
My conclusion is that the program I wrote is too slow. My computer is also too slow. There are 580,717,429,720,889,409,486,981,450 combinations of groups of 34 drawings in 100 drawings. It is very clear that with only 1 million scanned, I'm very far from the number of total combinations. I choose to scan groups of 34 drawings because it is easier to find 6 numbers missing in that group than in groups of 37. Remeber that, basically, in only 7 drawings, we can have the 42 numbers, but, due to repeaters, we need a little more drawing to exhaust all 42 numbers. And the more drawings we have, the less chance we have to have missing numbers. However, in Gandalf method, the searched drawings are not consecutive, doing the job less problematic. GameBelgium Excel sheet show that this is possible. So, my test showed me that I must now search another way to do the job. Gandalf suggestion to scan 10 lines with 30 or 32 numbers is worth trying. One thing is certain : it is very easy to search the drawings when you know the result but doing the reverse operation is a very difficult one. In the total of combinations, there is probably more than one group with 6 numbers missing. If you get 8 groups, you will have 48 numbers to choose from. Maybe a little less if there are doubles or triples. The method would be worthless. So, let's work more to make progress.
I scanned these 1 million lines to find 6 numbers missing to play for the drawing of 11 FEB 2009.
The 2 groups with 4 numbers missing popped up in lines 4220 and 975798.
Line - Group of 34 drawings
4220 7 9 11 12 13 16 17 19 22 27 28 31 39 41 44 46 51 54 56 58 60 63 64 65 68 75 76 77 82 83 85 91 94 100 Missing numbers : 4 : 15 17 25 34 0 0
975798 2 12 13 16 17 18 22 24 25 26 27 33 42 44 45 55 60 66 67 68 71 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 86 89 91 92 93 99 Missing numbers : 4 : 4 9 15 34 0 0
Drawing of 11 FEB 2009 : 2 6 12 14 15 40
There is just one number right (15) wich is common to two results.
To be good, we have to find 6 missing numbers in groups of around 37 numbers.
taaroa