Heuristic algorithm for solving the integer programming of the lottery problem

In this paper, we propose a heuristic algorithm, named the lottometa heuristic, to solve smallinstances of the lottery problem, using its set covering formulation. the algorithm uses a randomizedmethod, allotting a priority to each column to be included in the solution. a neighborhood search strategyis fused with the algorithm to enhance the search and to balance the exploration and exploitationprocedures. computational results show that our method outperforms the best known solutions for anumber of hard instances.