I think I know my problem... I cannot see patterns!
People claim odd/even, v-trac etc.. sums root sums and such can help identify trends ,I cannot see these, sometimes after the fact but never in time.
I will continue to keep my spreadsheets up to date in case something else comes along, but I don't forsee my pick 3 playing ever getting off of paper... I am going back to the programming side of things, as my analysis skills are woefully inadequate.
My local library was kind enough to order a book for me through the very useful and much overlooked feature of "InterLibrary Loan"... just take an author-title-ISBN number to your local library and they can find you a book from anywhere in the country ;-)
I just requested
Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition
by Chrstopher M. Bishop ((c)1995 Oxford University Press)
ISBN (Hardcover) 0-19-853849-9
ISBN (Paperback) 0-19-853864-2
I am just not good at studying raw data... I had briefly explored neural nets back in the mid 90's for unrelated stuff, it's time to take it up a notch, get some theory behind the effort... I am also brushing up on the basics, just returned a huge arithmetic basics book to the library and picked up a refresher on algebra... one book every 2 weeks should shake the rust off (up next ,geometry ,trig, pre-calc and then I can read that big calculus book I have and understand it ;-) )
I did this when I was 30 (5 years ago) from arithmetic thru trig to get the cobwebs off for helping my kids in school with their math homework, now that they are in higher grades, I gotta keep working at it to keep up my "Mathemagician" bragging rights ;-)
I tried, I failed... it happens more often than not in the lottery game ,at least it didn't cost anyone any $$$ ;-) Given that I am only 2 weeks into my 12 week self-imposed math boot camp, I will probably be out of ideas for a few months.
good luck