In the past few days, we have added a Powerball selector allowing users to filter combinations including specific numbers. So if you want to see only combinations of numbers containing a birthdate or a particularly lucky number, that is now possible.
I have also noticed that running a selection that returns large result sets (i.e., requesting a select with a very wide range between Min and Max Totals, or with no filters at all) appears to be locking up the page. The loading animation plays for a while, then no results are returned. Running another filter immediately afterwards with a smaller Min/Max range will successfully return results.
For this reason, I posted a recommendation about the Min/Max range on the page. I will be researching ways to make the queries less intensive to correct these large result sets failing to load. However, we are dealing with 11M possible combinations in the database, so I have never expected to provide instant results. Also, the whole purpose of the site is to give users a number of tools to allow them to produce a minimal result set. Returning large sets of number combinations is the opposite of how users should be using the site, so I don’t currently plan on spending too much time worrying about that sort of optimization. If we need to restructure the data for scaling to more users, we will jump off that bridge as we approach our current limits.
And while we’re on the subject of additional filtering, I should note that more filtering options are on the way. First, we will be adding a filter to allow users to remove combinations in which sequential numbers appear. I will be adding some information about this to the Powerball Stats section, but it boils down to the unlikelihood of Powerball winning combinations containing numbers in perfect sequence.
I also conceived an entirely new filtering option this weekend, so I will be tinkering around with our queries to figure out the best way to implement it. This filter will be our first that can also run on the red Powerball numbers as well, so I’ll have to think about the best way to work it into the page. It will allow users to filter numbers by how recently numbers have last been drawn in winning combos. So users can choose to favor numbers that have been drawn most frequently or numbers that have been drawn most seldom. I’ll have the full details of this filter in a forthcoming post when the feature is ready.
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