OT Company Raffle

This week where I alledgedly work, for a quid ,one gets the chance
to win a day off and £150 cash.

With 95 employees and no way of knowing how many tickets each
person is buying, how many shall I get ?


1. Assume only a few bods will buy 2 or three tickets and,
bulk buy 100 ? - 100/ 105 ( say) gives an evenish chance.

2. Be really boring and buy just the one ?

3. Buy none, then take a sickie and feel smug.

 

This can be illustrated using the example of the "Best of the Best"
thing you see at airports. You can buy a raffle ticket to win a Ferrari
- or other expensive motor. They guarantee the number of tickets, and
publicise it. Let's take an example from their website. Mercedes
SL500. Tickets are 70ukp each, and there are going to be 2700 of them.
So your chance of winning, if you buy one ticket is 1 in 2700. And you
get a 70K motor for 70quid. The chance of you winning is hugely
increased by buying two tickets. Although you are spending 100pc more,
it's only 70 quid. And 140 as a proportion of 70,000 is quite, quite
different from 70 as a proportion of 70,000. That's statistics for you.

A professional gambler I know has calculated the optimum number of
tickets to buy in terms of potential winnings and initial outlay (for a
particular deal, and they change marginally all the time). He hasn't
bothered having a go, because there's no skill in it, and he's not
really interested.

In essence, you've really got to know how many tickets there are.

Take your money to
http://www.willhill.com/iibs/en/sportsbook.asp?aff=wcouk

You'll have more fun.

 

Heh - I have an acount there already.

In the end I bought 2 tickets.

I will not be having and day off and an expensive curry.

Why is it it is always the person that dreams up these things that
wins them ffs?

 

None or one. Any more is a waste.

 

What a load of bollox. In both cases your expected return in the long
run is the exactly the same. *Thats* statistics.