How about some Mega Millions picks for 12 January 2010?

OK. Here are some Mega Millions picks for 12 January 2010. There are no guarantees. The best that I have done so far in Mega Millions was to win $30 in a recent game. (In this case, we didn't win anything, mostly because the winning pick had a Mega Ball that was a low probability number: 5-9-31-37-56 Mega Ball 16)

Pick              Mega Ball
15-18-39-40-45     6
11-13-18-28-48    39
 7-18-28-41-50    36
 8-18-28-37-55    15
 8-13-28-39-41    44
 4-22-27-39-46    23
22-27-39-43-46    46
 4-27-43-46-55    40
 8-18-44-48-56    27
 1- 6-31-53-54    27
 1-27-45-50-53     2
 6-15-45-53-55    24

How we did in Cash Five for 11 January 2010

Well, we didn't do too great. We won $2 for 8 sets of picks.
(January 11, 2010):

8-14-19-23-28
11-14-19-24-32 - won $2
8-10-14-16-33
6-10-14-24-37
3-13-15-19-33
3-16-19-23-24
3-17-19-28-32
6-13-16-19-28

What I have been doing since August 2009

Since August 2009, I have been working hard on a family of computer programs, for my personal use, that use AI techniques to "predict the near future". I use several layers of heuristic rating methods to generate sets of predictions. I also generate reports that show the historical performance over time. I am not trying to prefectly guess the future. I just want to make a little money in the process. On example of what I can do are some picks for the Texas lottery game "Cash Five" for tonight (January 11, 2010):

8-14-19-23-28
11-14-19-24-32
8-10-14-16-33
6-10-14-24-37
3-13-15-19-33
3-16-19-23-24
3-17-19-28-32
6-13-16-19-28

This week, I am mostly playing on paper, not actually spending money buying picks. I would not recommend buying these, but it would be interesting to see how these perform in tonight's Cash Five drawing. I will give an update and some picks for tmorrow night's game tomorrow.

The CRU documents are posted to a news group

I guessed that this would be the case. The documents obtained by the Russian hackers are posted to a news group. They are from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. They are saud to imply that scientific data was altered to show that there was global warming, even when actual temperatures were in decline. You can find the RAR file by searching with BinSearch (the website) with the search term "Climate". Look in the most popular news groups.

Artificial Intelligence in Action

The emphasis on rule-based systems in the mid-1980's was a mistaken notion based on experience with mostly toy systems. The work of John R. Anderson was the exception. He continued to evolve tutoring systems that worked off a combination of rules and knowledge structures.

I have been working on programs since August that use some alternate approaches to applying AI techniques. The classic architecture of "generate and test" still works. The major component of the "generate" portion are heuristic rating systems and some just plain "hacks". I quickly found that in my problem domain of choice, that I had to go beyond principles and look at performance with real world data. In conjunction with the heuristic rating systems, I also use some extremely simple machine learning. Those two together seem to be producing adequate performance. I will continue to tweak and test every day, as new ideas occur to me and I see the results of applying what I have.

Megan McArdle?

I have been curious as to what is happening to Megan McArdle. She has kept moving to the left as she has switched employers. The Atlantic certainly is a left-leaning publication, which is fine in itself. She was running along, blogging frequently, and then lately has fallen strangely silent. I hope she is OK. She was going to get married and then decided that they couldn't afford to marry. So what is up? At least she finally spoke up today with several blog posts after being quiet for some days. I find her present political orientation understandable, as Megan started out on the far left, and then picked up libertarian tendencies. I was fooled prior to 2008 into thinking that she was center-right. At best, she is center left, but probably just left.

The Nobel Peace Prize

Barack Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize just shows how politicized the award has become. What did Obama do, promise to close Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center and then not do it?