crawdad105
New member
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2010
- Messages
- 1
A club has a membership drawing each year. They put your name on a ping pong ball and put it in a bowl. The 1st year you get one ball in the bowl. If you don’t get picked you get another ball for each successive year you apply. In theory this increases your odds each successive year you are in the lottery.
This year there are 17 openings, thus 17 drawings. There are 89 people with one ball, 37 with two, 19 with 3, 23 with 4 and 12 people with 5 for a total of 372 balls. If there were the same number of people in each group the odds of someone from each group being picked are 1 ball 7%, 2 balls 13%, 3 balls 20%, 4 balls 27%, 5 balls 33%.
I know the odds of each individual vs. everyone else in the bowl remain the same no matter how many people are in each group but the odds of someone from a particular group being picked can vary greatly depending on how many people are in each group. For example this year the odds of someone from the 1 ball group being picked are about the same as someone from the 4 ball group at approx. 24% (89 ÷ 372 and 92 ÷ 372). That defeats the concept of your overall odds increasing each year. Is there a way to make the odds of someone from each group being picked be 7%, 13%, 20%, 27% and 33% for the initial pick?
Eg.
-- Adjust the number of balls per person in certain groups?
-- Putting each group’s balls in their own bowl and having a certain number of drawings from each bowl based on the above percentages times the number of total picks to be made?
Or am I way off base in my above assumptions???
This year there are 17 openings, thus 17 drawings. There are 89 people with one ball, 37 with two, 19 with 3, 23 with 4 and 12 people with 5 for a total of 372 balls. If there were the same number of people in each group the odds of someone from each group being picked are 1 ball 7%, 2 balls 13%, 3 balls 20%, 4 balls 27%, 5 balls 33%.
I know the odds of each individual vs. everyone else in the bowl remain the same no matter how many people are in each group but the odds of someone from a particular group being picked can vary greatly depending on how many people are in each group. For example this year the odds of someone from the 1 ball group being picked are about the same as someone from the 4 ball group at approx. 24% (89 ÷ 372 and 92 ÷ 372). That defeats the concept of your overall odds increasing each year. Is there a way to make the odds of someone from each group being picked be 7%, 13%, 20%, 27% and 33% for the initial pick?
Eg.
-- Adjust the number of balls per person in certain groups?
-- Putting each group’s balls in their own bowl and having a certain number of drawings from each bowl based on the above percentages times the number of total picks to be made?
Or am I way off base in my above assumptions???