Years ago we held a drawing for a side of beef and other items. We sold 250 tickets. 1 person had 50 of them. He didn't win anything. While his odds as an individual were better then any other indicidual his odds were never better then the field
CW Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless -----Original Message----- From: "Veech" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:42:27 To:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "The Hardware List" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [H] Odds calculator that's not exactly what I'm looking for. Let me put it this way... Take a deck of cards, remove the aces. Shuffle thoroughly. Select 12 cards at random of the 48. What are the odds that *none* of the 12 cards you selected will be face cards? > > Let's look at the probability that someone NOT in your group wins. > > Probability = Number of people NOT in your group/total number of people > > First Pick: 186/254 = 73.2% > Last Pick: 175/243 = 72.0% > (assuming once the name is picked, it is not put back) > > So, the odds of a non staff member being picked remain at about 72.5% for > all drawings. > > The larger group that does not include your staff will always have a > higher > chance of winning. I think you have fallen into the probability trap that > assumes that the events are dependent on each other. Each drawing is in > fact, independent of the previous drawings, so the chance of a non-staff > member being selected is always the number of the non-staff members > remaining divided by the total number of people remaining. > > See > http://www.mathsrevision.net/gcse/pages.php?page=32 > > Hope this helps, > > Jim Maki > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
