with the new powerball format starting jan 7 powerball bonus ball goes from 1-39...we know that the ball is randomly drawn meaning that any ball has equal chance to come out...(if you dont base your strategy on some kind of statistical method then your only fooling yourself and might as well go with QP)
my approach into working my way to the most likely ball drawn is the following:
i break down the balls into 4 *equal* groups: 1-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39....(*notice that the 1-9 group has only 9 balls when compared to the others which have ten) but anyhow the difference in percentage is very slim so call em equal....
since i have four equal groups statistically it means that any group should hit with a 25% chance...say over 100 draws the hits should be around 25 hits per group (in reality it may be smth like: 23, 27, 26, 24) but you get the idea....
tracking group hits only narrows it down a bit...still more work to do after you get down to 10..but it helps anyway to a degree...
it is important to keep track of the hits and misses for the groups over time....for example at the beginning it took 8 draws before a ball from the 10-19 group came out (#18)...for a 25% chance going 8 draws with no show is kinda high and soon will hit most likely within next three draws after 8..so its important to spot things like that...also if some numbers are real stinkers is better to leave them alone and go for numbers that have hit at some point rather...do not insist on bad stinkers just cause they are "due"..its generally better to go with history.....
stats show that since jan 7 up to today there have been 23 draws total...it is therefore expected that each group should have hit around 0.25*23=5.75 ( 5 or 6 times each )...real stats: 1-9=4, 10-19=3, 20-29=8, 30-39=8....since it is a bit early the stats are more skewed at the beginning of history (it has not reached steady state yet which comes after many draws...)....
you can group different things too following the same idea i did for grouping tenths...then just be aware of the percentages of the way you grouped things and their respective skips and hits...
its a random game so there is no absolute certainty at any given time...but stats do tell a story...so i believe its helpful to a certain degree to make some careful observations based on them....