get_lottery_data = function(){
    ##
    ## xpdf ../../EBook/Applied_Linear_Models_with_R.pdf -z 200 307 &
    ##
    con = file('~/Projects/Reading/N_Z/Zelterman/Data/LOTTERY.DAT', open='r')
    states = c()
    data = c()
    while( TRUE ){
        line = readLines(con, n=1)
        if( length(line)==0 ){
            break
        }
        T = read.table(text=line, stringsAsFactors=FALSE, na.strings='.')
        n = ncol(T)
        
        if(n==6){ ## do different things depending on how many entries there are on each line
            state_name = T[1]
            number_columns = 2:n
        }else if(n==7){
            state_name = paste(T[1:2], collapse='_')
            number_columns = 3:n
        }else if(n==10){
            state_name = T[1]
            number_columns = 2:6
        } else if(n==13){
            state_name = paste(T[1:2], collapse='_')
            number_columns = 3:7
        }
      df = as.matrix(T[, number_columns])
      states = c(states, gsub('\\.', '', state_name))
      if( length(data)==0 ){
          data = df
      }else{
          data = rbind(data, df)
      }
    }
    close(con)

    data = data.frame(data)
    data$state = states
    data = data[, c(6, 1:5)]
    colnames(data) = c('town', 'winners', 'pop', 'area', 'mill', 'books')
    
    return(data)
}