Simple Lottery Program
Learn By Example
One of the books that got me into programming was "Perl by Example" by Ellie Quigley. I learned a lot about how to perform certain tasks using simple examples.
This week's post is highlighting an example of how I learned using the book. The following is an example of creating a "Lottery Picker" Python application. This is a pretty basic example of using various Python functionality to generate a random set of numbers.
PowerBall Quick Pick
Players must select 5 numbers from 1 to 69. Then they must pick one additional number from a range of 1 to 26.
In this example, the program outputs 4 games. I use the sort list function to display the smaller numbers first.
import random
# Powerball Quick Pick
GameBalls = list(range(1,69))
PowerBall = list(range(1,26))
random.shuffle(GameBalls)
random.shuffle(PowerBall)
for x in range(4):
mywin = GameBalls[0:5]
mywin.sort()
print(f"Winning Numbers: {mywin} with a Powerball number {PowerBall[0]}")
random.shuffle(GameBalls)
random.shuffle(PowerBall)
Sample Output
Winning Numbers: [2, 11, 15, 27, 58] with a Powerball number 10 Winning Numbers: [9, 54, 58, 63, 67] with a Powerball number 3 Winning Numbers: [10, 16, 18, 47, 62] with a Powerball number 4 Winning Numbers: [3, 35, 38, 41, 56] with a Powerball number 3
Odds of Winning Powerball
The odds of winning the PowerBall is 11,688,053 to 1. You have a one in 91 chance of matching at least 1 number.
Things This Code Demonstrates
The above piece of code answers some common "how do I" questions:
- How do I create a python list not starting from 0?
- How doI shuffle a list in Python?
- In Python, How do I create a new list from another list?
- How do I sort a randomize python list?
- After shuffling a list how do I sort it?
Future Site Content
I'll add a PowerBall number picker to the Random selection.