Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Puzzle Prize Lottery!

In case you haven't noticed, we at SoSG like games. And (simple) math. Here's a little more of each for you.

As promised, everyone who submitted a solution attempt for the Nostradamus puzzle, correct or not, has been entered into a lottery to receive a Dodger-related prize item, courtesy of SoSG (SoSG Sax, to be specific). Also as promised, the manner in which the winner is selected will be both random and transparent. So here's how it works. First, the thirteen people who submitted an attempt, in rough but not necessarily exact chronological order of their submissions:

   0. Karina
   1. Mike Scioscia's T.I.
   2. QuadSevens
   3. Steve
   4. Neeebs
   5. Berkowit28
   6. Gil Garesh
   7. Cigarcow
   8. Jose
   9. StolenMonkey86
   10. Erin
   11. Daniel
   12. Fanerman

You may notice we started the numbering at 0 instead of 1. Here's why: based on the recorded attendance at tonight's Dodgers-Rockies game, as will be listed on dodgers.com tomorrow, we will pick the winner. Simply divide the attendance figure by 13, and whatever the remainder is will indicate the winner. So if there are 40,000 in attendance, dividing by 13 would give 3,076 with a remainder of 12, so Fanerman would win. If there are 36,351 in attendance, dividing by 13 would give 2,796 with a remainder of 3, so Steve would win. And so on.

Thankfully SoSG employs a team of full-time mathematicians precisely for situations like this, so we can probably achieve a 24-hour turnaround time on the calculation and have the winner announced soon after. He or she will just have to provide us with a physical mailing address via email, and we'll ship out the prize at our expense*. Good luck!

*we are not responsible for items lost in mail, particularly if being mailed to Venezuela.

14 comments:

jose said...

What about me?

Eric Karros said...

Ooops! sorry Jose...I'll correct. If anyone else out there sees I omitted them, please let me know.

QuadSevens said...

So is Jose #13 and we are now dividing by 14? Or is Jose going to be inserted somewhere in the middle and certain people are now looking for a different remainder as their lottery number?

Erin said...

Orel, I was confused, too, until I realized EK had already inserted Jose. The number for dividing used to be twelve, now it's thirteen.

QuadSevens said...

Got it. 52,002 is the attendance I'm hoping for then. Go Doyers!

Erin said...

The weird thing is, I just randomly picked an attendance number to see how the math worked out. I picked 44,327. Divided by 13, it's 3409, with a remainder of 10. And that's my number on the list! How crazy is that?

Orel said...

I mean, what are the chances?

QuadSevens said...

1 in 13.

Erin said...

You beat me to it, Quad.

Still, though. That's, what, a 7.7% chance of picking the right number? I was pretty impressed with myself.

Eric Karros said...

Just FYI, for his career, Barry Bonds hit a home run in about 7.7% of his at bats.

karina said...

lucky seven?

karina said...

By the way, venezuelan post office works efficient enough.

Erin said...

And, if I recall baseball history correctly, Barry Bonds was known as quite the home run hitter. So I did pretty well there.

Of course, I should have said I picked a correct number, since there are many correct ones out there. Something like 4000, I think. Though far fewer if we go with realistic attendance numbers (40000-56000, I guess). I don't know. I'm good at math, but I'm no whiz.

Eric Karros said...

Just don't go taking steroids to try to improve your chances of winning.

Another random fact: For his career, Paul Lo Duca struck out in about 7.7% of his at-bats.