The prediction mechanism?
We can't control the physical factors that lead to a winning number.
So we can't take physical factors into account when making a prediction.
All that we have are the past draws, the make-up of the particular game and their past statistics.
So for our prediction maybe we should use those.
But people use anything from quick picks to birthdays.
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The past draws should reflect the make-up of the game if the game is "honest", for example on the pick 3 there are more Singles than Doubles, so on the past draws there should also be more Singles than Doubles, like about 72% Singles in the very long run.
The closer that the past draws reflect the "make-up" of the game, maybe the more "honest" that the game is.
There are of course, short term, mid term and long term stats.
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So, What then should we use for prediction? Maybe "Statistical Probability", that is prediction techniques based on statistical probability.
But there are as many opinions as there are people.
And there can be many kinds of prediction techniques that are based on statistical probabilities.
There are many kinds of statistical probabilities.
As to the statistical probabilities you can either use Math or your own judgement, as for myself not knowing much about Math, I used my own judgement, that is when I used to make predictions, but for a long stream of some particular predictions long ago I used mostly software.