Lottery info is at http://www.powerball.com
Retrieves lottery drawing results from "today" back to the beginning of the Powerball epoch (1 Nov 1997) and lists the 5 most-often-drawn numbers and most-often-drawn Powerball, in addition to listing how many times each number and each Powerball has been drawn.
Note the numbers included in the game have expanded over time, so numbers in the 50s appear disproportionately few times.
Requires the hpricot gem. Runs in 1.9.3; unsure of earlier versions.
The powerball.rb script takes four optional arguments:
➤ ruby ./powerball.rb <data_requested> <output_format> <start_date_input> <end_date_input>data_requested = all (default) | white | powerball | white_number_order | white_frequency_number_order | powerball_number_order | powerball_frequency_number_order
output_format = text (default) or tsv which is tab separated
start_date_input = date back in time to start looking for data - defaults to 1 Nov 1997
end_date_input = end date to stop looking for data - defaults to today
➤ ruby ./powerball.rb
Getting Powerball drawing data from 11/27/2012 back to 11/01/1997 ...
Got 1824283 bytes of Powerball data. Stand by for parsing.
Examining results of 1573 drawings...
Top 5 numbers: 20, 41, 32, 26, 16
Top Powerball: 20
Detail:
Regular numbers
==================
Number Draws
------ -----
20 171
41 169
32 166
26 164
16 163
42 162
45 159
22 158
5 157
49 157
40 157
39 156
30 155
48 153
14 153
19 153
35 152
12 152
13 151
43 150
37 148
8 148
15 148
7 148
10 147
27 144
4 144
9 144
36 144
17 144
38 143
34 142
28 142
2 142
47 141
24 140
23 140
44 138
3 138
6 138
11 138
18 137
31 137
1 136
46 134
21 131
29 128
33 128
25 120
50 104
52 95
51 94
53 84
54 65
55 65
59 43
56 38
58 37
57 30
Powerballs
==================
Powerball Draws
--------- -----
20 53
2 53
6 51
37 51
14 47
31 47
23 46
8 45
33 44
18 43
11 43
29 42
1 41
15 41
13 39
25 39
5 39
35 39
9 39
26 38
21 38
30 38
24 38
36 38
17 37
19 35
32 34
10 34
4 33
39 33
28 32
12 32
3 32
27 32
22 31
16 30
7 30
38 30
34 29
41 20
40 19
42 18