Hello,
I have been testing this program as well for the powerball draw and have found some interesting results.
The program generates about 3 million combinations total with no filters set and then starts to repeat.I have tested several output files with 2 different computers and they all have the same numbers in the same order.The output files just start in different places(such as line #1 in one draw file may be on line #100,000 in another and the next numbers will be exactly the same).
Since the program only generates a set amount of the same numbers - the numbers in the data file and in the lottery help pages it states the program has built in filters that cannot be turned off,most of the time the winning combination is not in the the output files.
The any, ver, powerball, and ion filters just filter through this pool of 3 million numbers.Set any filters you like,generate the output file and those same numbers will be in the pool of 3 million numbers generated with no filters.
If the generator will not generate the winning combo with no filters set,due to the internal filters,backtesting will fail every time regardless of what any, ver, ion or powerball filters are set.
No one but ion knows what the ion filters do.The any,ver,and powerball are straighforward and easy to understand.The ion filters seem to make no sense.I assume he is doing some type of calculation on the nimbers ,but I cannot reason what that may be.
On testing the filtering system with a known number in the pool of 3 million with filters set to +1max or +1max and -1 min it failed every time for me also.I have not tried the purge functin yet.
I have been tracking a pool of 3 million numbers generated on 1-21-06 and here are the results I have found so far:
only 1 powerball 5+1 combination win so far on 2-11-06
7 38 40 51 52 14
6- 5 white ball hits
thousands of 4 white ball hits.
No pattern to this in the draw file.The program also generates 4 white ball combinations of past winning numbers in the data file.Those are unlikely to come up.It has only happened about twice since the powerball started in 1997.
If you looking for the jackpot it seems this program is not likely to generate the winning combo very often,and even when it does the filters are likely to filter it out.
Those are my observations of MDIEditor thus far.