Irish Lotto Statistics: Hot And Cold Numbers

I have been studying past Irish lotto results for the last week. The National lottery website used to have a page of statistics but that was pretty useless since they changed the lotto draw from 42 to 45 numbers and their statistics showed results from before and after the changeover.

I took the last 108 main lotto draws (starting 3rd June 2010 until 12th June 2010) and copied the 6 first numbers from each draw into a spreadsheet in order to see if there are any numbers that come out more often than the rest. Here are my observations so far:

• Some numbers look like they are unlucky : 43 came out twice in the last 108 draws, 1 came out 7 times, 12, 25 and 31 came out 8 times and 5 came out 9 times.
• Now for the hot numbers (those that come out more often: 2, 3 and 24 came out 20 times over the 108 last draws, 9, 15, 32 and 34 came out 19 times, 4 and 7 came out 18 times and 10, 18, 20, 36, 39 and 40 came out 17 times.

What to make of these observations? If I were to pick my next 6 lotto numbers, I would pick a mixture of cold, medium and hot numbers as follow: 1 cold number, 2 or 3 medium and 2 or 3 hot numbers because I think that I would have a better chance of winning this way than if I picked all hot or all cold numbers.

Of course I could be mistaken, and it could take the next 10 lotto draws to turn some of the above cold numbers into medium or even hot numbers but for lack of a better insight, that is what I would personally go for right now.