The cornerstone of my investment portfolio is playing the lottery. Each week I purchase some tickets, each of which has six numbers from 1-60 on them (without repeats). I have no delusions about particularly lucky numbers or trends in independently random events.
My problem is with the feasibility of checking all of these tickets. At the end of the week, I'll have a stack of tickets and the correct numbers, and I need to look through them all to see if I've won. The problem is to design such a system where either by purchasing particular numbers and/or by storing the tickets in a particular way, I reduce the difficulty in determining if there's a winner and finding it. I expect to purchase a very large number of tickets.
The following constraints apply:
-Since the jackpot pool is finite, having two identical tickets earns me less than two different tickets unless a third ticket splits a win with me. I prefer that none of the tickets are duplicates (which can be assumed given pseudorandom generation or specifically controlled for).
-The lottery I play in gives awards for matching 4, 5, or all 6 of the numbers. The system must provide the information for all of them.
-I have a large area to store the tickets, but it's not infinite.
-I do not have the time to linearly look through all the tickets after learning the winning numbers.
-If there's a computer used in the solution, take data entry errors into account.
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