OK Nam Are you ready to pick anumber?.......

Mike,

my final post on this topic.

Consider the following scenerio. A new casino opens and decides to give away $10,000 as a door prize to one individual from the first 10,000 people in the door. We decide to get all our friends (say 200) together and camp out at the door and are assigned the numbers 1 through 200 (i.e. the numbers are assigned sequentially). Then the casino operator asks someone (i.e. a biased non-machine carbon unit) to provide him a number between 1 and 10,000. Wouldn't it be nice - for us at least - if the number picker was our 201st friend?
 
I chose the number because I was tired and wanted to see if I had won so I could go to sleep. Trust me, If I could have picked some ones number on purpose it would have been mine.

I think this raffle will work, but give them a chance to work the bugs out.
 
It would be very nice indeed. Especially since the 201st person would know who the first 200 where in line. Since Bo, or anyone for that matter, had no idea who held what number, it was as fair as we could get on such short notice. Add the fact that the numbers where skipped when we had a person would buy a ticket of another type (BFC Native or SIFU).

Your story would be credible only if you all new what numbers where going to whom as was in your example. Since that is not the case here, I beleive the drawing was fair.

If you have a better way I am all ears.

------------------
Best Regards,
Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
Do it! Do it right! Do it right NOW!

Support BladeForums! Check out the BFC Store!
www.bladeforums.com/store
Subscribe our NEW online magazine!
www.bladeforums.com/magazine
Enter our Raffle!
www.bladeforums.com/raffle
 
Mike,

since you still don't understand, I will go against my word and post again.

The fact is that our 201st friend does not know who holds which number. He only knows that the numbers were assigned sequentially and that his friends were low in the queue, so he just has to pick a low number. This little amount of information is enough to completely bias the outcome of the raffle ... in other words it is not random.

Here is another example, using myself as an example. Let's say I'm the first and also the last one to buy tickets and only one other person buys a ticket, Mr. X. And let's say that I buy 50 tickets each time and Mr. X buys one ticket. So in your sequential ordering, I have numbers 1 ==> 50, Mr. X has 51, and I have numbers 52 ==> 101. Now you announce that you need a number picker and that they have to pick a number between 1 and 101. So this guy/gal decides to split the difference and picks 51! (They always favor splitting the difference; others prefer even numbers, or birthdays, or number of knives!)

Was this raffle fair, in your opinion? Let's increase the number of tickets to 1001 (or 10001, or 100001) and it's clear that the result will always be the same if the number picker splits the difference.

In short, you cannot expect to have a fair raffle when there is both no randomness in the assigning of tickets AND in the picking of the winning ticket. It has been shown over and over by statisticians that people are extremely poor random number generators.

(Aside: did you know that the first draft for VietNam back in 67(?) has been shown to be statistically non-random since the balls were not stirred sufficiently and they came out of the drum correlated to the (reverse) order they were put in and this was a simple sequential assigning of birthdates.)
 
Well Mike, I see what you're sayin', so why don't you just write the names on the tickets randomly after they are all purchased, and throw them in a big ol' hat. Then just pick the winner yourself
smile.gif
.

I think this last raffle was fair, but to escape any possible further criticism...

------------------
Yeah! Drop the chalupa...


 
If you have ever been to a raffle for something (charitable or whatever), they have a huge roll of sequentially numbered tickets. If you plunk down $50, you get the next 50 tickets on the roll (assuming they are $1 a piece). They don't rip the whole roll apart to give you tickets from various sections of the roll. This was no different. The only difference is that instead of someone calling out a ticket number, they usually have the other half of the tickets in a hat and someone draws one. Nevertheless, your chances remain the same and are not influenced by how ther winning ticket is determined.
 
That is how we did the Native and SIFU raffle. So all future raffles will be done that same way. Nam wanted to pick the number and it was his knife so I let him. He was not able to connect so I had someone else pick it. BTW the number he picked was not in the middle, also I had no idea what number he would choose and he had no idea who bought the tickets. So it was a random as random can get. Your examples all assue the the person buying the tickets knows where they are on the list. Well that is where your argument breaks down as no one could possible know where they where on that list as there where too many variables.

And since no future raffles will be held this way we are now at the end of this subject.

------------------
Best Regards,
Mike Turber
BladeForums Site Owner and Administrator
Do it! Do it right! Do it right NOW!

Support BladeForums! Check out the BFC Store!
www.bladeforums.com/store
Subscribe our NEW online magazine!
www.bladeforums.com/magazine
Enter our Raffle!
www.bladeforums.com/raffle
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top