Original Blog Entry: PA Cash4Life history file generation went fast!

hypersoniq — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:38:58 GMT

I have never even looked at this game before. Needed to create a history file from April, 2016 to last night.

On the PA website, you can view one year at a time. The output is in a table, so it is a simple copy/paste special operation to start.

Once I did the paste operations from all years into the spreadsheet, there was an extra row below each draw that had the cash ball .

Since I was not interested in the cash ball (1 to 4) I selected the first cell (A1), went to data/filters/standard filter

I created a filter where it would select all rows that contained Cash , select all of the resultant rows, and right click in the row number and chose delete rows .

Back to data/filters and chose remove filter

Then I was left with the draws only. From this, I deleted blank columns between the results.

Then, after converting the textdate format to date, I selected the date column contents and clicked the A to Z sort, and replied yes when it wanted to extend the selection to all 5 number columns, and I had my history with the newest draw at the bottom. I also saved a copy as .csv for later use in Python.

The python coding for the production pick N script went well also... added variance to the column statistics. Now it displays the last 3 classification 7 draw windows PLUS the data for the last 150 draws.

I am no further on the actual pick for the pick 3, so that will have to wait for tomorrow to go live.

The things you pick up in spreadsheets... time on that cash4life sheet from start to finish was around 30 minutes. Most of that due to the dates on the PA website... it lists newest on top, but I use them with the newest on the bottom so updating is easier. That is why I needed to sort the dates, the years were correct, but they were sorted descending.

It is important to make sure the date column is actually DATE format and not textdate, as it pastes from the website... that was as easy as using the text to column feature under the data tab and choosing type date m/d/y... i did this BEFORE sorting.

The Cash4Life script will need to be a major rewrite of the pickN script... i want the same output, but everything changes... ranges per column, expectancy, draw window... taking time with this to get it right.

All in all, a productive day!... [ More ]