======================================================
THE SYSTEM TEST PROBLEM ... N=25 ... A SURPRISE
======================================================
Finishing well in the system test problem didn't mean
a thing ... but it DID prove to have an interesting finish!
During the last few days of the POTM, I was surprised by an
entry which is worthy of special mention. Tong Nghia sent
a nine ticket solution to the system test problem that did
NOT have the most common sum of 669 ... Tong's sum was 642.
Unlike the other 9 ticket solutions ... the ticket containing
numbers 1-7 was notably absent!!! I have no idea what this
means other than there is certainly more than one approach
to this complex problem ... and that Tong Nghia is one of
the contest's most "out-of-the-box" thinkers!!!
Here's Tong Nghia's LOTO_WINNER solution to the N=25 problem:
1 2 3 4 15 16 17
1 2 3 4 15 16 18
1 2 5 11 12 13 14
1 2 6 7 8 9 10
3 4 5 11 12 13 14
3 4 6 7 8 9 10
5 11 12 13 14 15 16
6 7 8 9 10 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
4 each of 1-4 16 numbers total 40
3 each of 5-16 36 numbers total 378
2 each of 17-18 4 numbers total 70
1 each og 19-25 7 numbers total 154
Grand total ... 642
So what happened to this entry when I ran it with N=37???
Ironically, the solution did NOT cover the king's draw
of "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" ... ouch!!!
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Here is a sample output from one of the
24 programs that found what once appeared to be
the optimal solution: 9 tickets with sum of 669.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 8 9
1 2 3 6 7 8 9
1 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
10 11 12 13 14 17 18
10 11 12 15 16 17 18
1 14 15 16 17 18 13
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
All (I'm pretty sure) shared the characteristics
of having the same number distribution to achieve
the identical sum:
FIVE 1's ; (5)
THREE EACH of 2-18 (510)
ONE EACH of 19-25 (154)
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Mon Mar 2 14:47:29 EST 1998
WEEK 17 84 have entered
443 have asked for details.
1711 are on the mailing list!
=========>>> THE FINAL SYSTEM TESTS <<<=============
ENTRY TICKETS SUM TIME LANG Programmer
---------------- ------- ----- ------ ---- -------------------
LOTO_WINNER 9 642 .10 c Tong Nghia
SWAG 9 669 .07 c Paul Banta
lotto 9 669 .09 c Jimmy Hu
LOTO_NHV 9 669 .09 C Nguyen Viet
autolotto 9 669 .09 gc David Van_Brackle
Lott-Er-Luck 9 669 .09 c Paul Bunting
who_needs_luck 9 669 .09 gC Shawn Fox
TroubleWithTriples 9 669 .09 C R.Saint S.Weldon
elboe 9 669 .10 c Andrew Gauld
The_Lucky_Draw 9 669 .11 gc S. Arun
LuckOut 9 669 .12 c Davor Slamnig
tripleg 9 669 .12 c Ivan Velev
LGVNWINH 9 669 .18 PAS Tran Hoang
PackUpYourTriples 9 669 .21 c John Linderman
Renegade 9 669 .23 c John Engels
Russian_Roulette 9 669 .27 C Dmitry Potapov
ShowMeTheMoney 9 669 .28 gc H.Burch D.Sleator
Bozo4_TM_So_Close 9 669 .70 CSH Susan Adams
RockNRodl 9 669 2.14 PERL Matthew Mullin
Rabbits 9 669 5.83 c Victor Udovenko
Prairie_Dog_Weiner 9 669 8.34 c Thad Smith
Hole_Lotto_Love 9 669 9.02 PERL John Williams
only_for_the_rich 9 669 201.99 c Franz Mauch
shroud_of_Turan 9 669 548.12 JAVA Ted Alper
tax_minimizer 9 669 590.15 gc George Papoutsis
mudpack 9 670 .29 c Doug Jones
HatTrick 9 670 .61 PERL D.Ross M.Hiller
WhatASweat 9 670 .94 c Giorgio DiFalco
ticketysplit 9 671 .19 c Vincent Goffin
El_Konyo 9 673 320.26 gc Yoichi Kono
Lot_O_Tickets 9 795 .23 c Beth Wilson
DuckAndCover 9 944 .07 c Happy Hacker
blotto 10 569 .11 c Warren Montgomery
Karin-T-L 11 641 .20 gC Peter Conrad
sevens 11 671 .46 c Aivars Zogla
Elbo_Mac 12 975 409.59 gC Andrew Royappa
CouldaBeen 13 1143 109.68 gC Keith Jones
EasyMoney 17 1458 1.27 c Joe Vollbrecht
cclljj 17 1458 23.47 c Chen Ling-Jyh
shoe_in 17 1509 25.42 gC Andy Olsen
Lotorenzo 17 1527 36.84 c Lourenco Arnasalon
lottoloser 18 1619 568.08 c Nguyen Trieu
luckyluke 18 1627 1.83 gC Michael Strauch
Slaughter-E 18 1643 1.28 c Brace Stout
simple 21 1825 .25 c Alexey Zhelvis
kentemp 21 1825 .32 gc Ken Bateman
zakharov 21 1825 .33 c Alexei Zakharov
loops 21 1825 .40 gc Bernard Hatt
in2win 21 1825 2.99 gC Joseph Eccles
DumbAndSlow 21 1825 3.92 C Colin Rafferty
straightforward_average 21 1825 17.66 gc Curtis Larsen
Lotta_rye 21 1825 22.38 C A.S.Kiran Koushik
king 21 1825 42.20 gC Brenda Holloway
lot-shot 21 1825 73.06 c George Menhorn
good2bdking 21 1825 90.47 c Shawn Wischoeffer
jabri_mamu 21 1825 238.64 gC Neelkanth Natu
pzsoltLottery 22 1935 1.32 gc Peter Zsolt
LuckyDip 50 4776 .10 c Roy Lett
tix 119 10514 2.21 c Eric Weeks
lottoluck 119 10684 .57 c Edwin Berlin
TicketToElbonia 152 13970 .16 c Sam Wilson
triceratops 182 16581 .31 c Earl Chew
Ticketmaster 194 19436 1.30 c Guy Oliver
NiceTry 194 19436 4.03 gc Seth Rothenberg
Brute_Remorse 202 20691 1.79 gC Chad Hurwitz
Olimpas 213 17319 .12 c Mantas Puida
Bingo 224 17666 .08 c Rags Viswanathan
frisbee 439 47203 2.07 PERL Andrew Schexnaydre
something_clever 1330 73150 .16 gc Don Dykes
J3lottery 1330 73150 .54 PERL Jason Nichols
(these guys ought to get some kind of special award too ...)
POTM_Emporer 116280 8953560 8.31 gc John Guo
Jester 341701 29209806 35.30 C Phillip Staite
Samanyolu 999999 0 c Ertugrul Tabak
MERLOT 999999 0 .08 c Elizabeth Ross
LottoMan 999999 0 .09 PAS Darren Davis
LuckAssure 999999 0 .09 c Vikram Sreeram
LOTO-OPTIMIST 999999 0 .09 c Le_Kim Quoc_Phong
Prince 999999 0 .10 c Brandon Crosby
noentry 999999 0 .10 N Luc Kumps
IMayAlreadyBeAWinner 999999 0 .12 c Phil Gregory
Two_Adder 999999 0 .21 PERL Nick Hildenbrandt
Indian_lottery 999999 0 1.94 JAVA Raja Kannan
copycat 999999 0 2.15 C Neal Palmer
hatchance 999999 0 10.31 JAVA George Adams
>> values of 999999 indicate incomplete or illegal output <<
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