Entries this day: Lottery Tuesday

Lottery

1:28pm Tuesday 22 May 2001

On Friday, Molly sent me this link: http://www.caden head.org/book/java2412/lottomad.html. It simulates a lottery in a java applet, allowing the user to choose 6 numbers between 1 and 50, inclusive. The applet simulates playing the lottery twice a week every week until one wins big. It generates random lottery numbers and keeps track of the number of 3-of-6, 4-of-6, 5-of-6, and 6-of-6 matches one gets. If one matches all 6 numbers, it stops.

Minh and I started the applet at the same moment on our respective computers, and bet a quarter on who would win the most by 10am Monday. If we tied at zero on 6 of 6, then we see who has the most 5-of-6. If that's a tie, then check 4-of-6 etc.

At 10am Monday, he had won:

My $ paid and years played are not as precise because I haven't stopped my lottery simulator yet. Here's the email I just sent to Molly.

I've been playing 34 thousand years and haven't won big yet.

Drew said 3-of-6 pays $5.

I don't know how to guesstimate the 4-of-6 and 5-of-6 payouts, but I'll
guess 100 and 1000, respectively.

Then I've won approximately
59000 * $   5  ~ $300,000
3050  * $ 100  ~ $305,000
50    * $1000  ~ $ 50,000
                --------
                 $655,000

Even if 5-of-6 pays $10,000, I've only won $500,000 more or a $1.1M, though
I've paid $3.5M


-----Original Message-----
From: Molly
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 11:32 AM
To: Rob
Subject: RE: lottery!


Here's the result from the person who told me about the link.



Alright -- I just got back to my desk and running lottery simulation after a
day away -- it must be some 4-5 days now that I've been running it.

After 23,000 simulated years, and 2.4 million drawings, it appears that I've
won the jackpot! So I suppose that lotteries aren't such a ridiculous
proposition, for those with longevity in their families and persistence in
their character...

Of course, I suppose that one would have had to spend $2.4 million just
playing the lottery for so long, too... (admittedly, you would have won some
small sums along the way, to help defray that.)




-----Original Message-----
From: Rob
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 9:09 AM
To: Molly
Subject: lottery!



I am hoping the subject line will make you think I won the java lottery over
the weekend.  I did not.

It's played 24 thousand years.  I've won 30 5-of-6, 2163 4-of-6 and 42141
3-of-6.

I imagine since there are only 50 numbers to choose from, it's a 1 in 45
chance to get 6 of 6 each time I get 5 of 6, so I should be closing in on
the big win.  (should be, if probability became more likely to win the more
times I don't)

Only $2.52M dollars spent!

Tuesday

4:13pm Tuesday 22 May 2001

I'm mostly not working right now; I just finished reading Laura's and Hillary's journals. I would read other YRUUers' journals that I know, but I don't know the URLs.

Like Hillary, I *!LOVE!* summer! It's practically freezing in my office, so I went outside and sat in my wonderfully toasty car, which has been chillin' in the sun all day with the windows rolled up. I kept them rolled up and just relaxed in the near sauna temperature. So great! And I didn't even sweat. I drink between .5 and 1.5 gallons of water each day, and my body knows not to sweat when I'm chillin' in my saunamobile.

But the *point* is that I feel all ookie icky cooped up in front of the stupid computer all day! Maybe I should start taking a unicycle break each day again. I can't today because I took the uni out of the trunk so I could take a pile of recycling to the recycling place, which is pretty close to my work. While I was there, a woman saw that I was recycling a YELLOW PAGES NATIONWIDE EDITION. It's not the Yellow Pages, but some company that has printed an listing of internet companies on the web, including MR Laboratories (when it existed) (without my permission) and tried to charge me $ for the luxury. Pshh. right.

So I gave her the phone book and her male companion (husband, brother, who knows) was all "yeah, we left Missouri City and moved to Michigan, and we got rid of all our phone books, and when we got to Michigan, we only had a itty bitty real thin phone book. When we came back to Missouri City, we didn't have a phone books, but my brother, luckily for that, delivers the phone book and he got us a copy of it and now we have a stack about this tall, and the way I see it, if you're gettin' rid of it, I'll take it, so now we'll have a nationwide edition of the phone book too."

I was all, "wow."

And now I'm all, how could you possibly think it's a nationwide phone book if the phone book for Michigan is this thin, and the phone book just for Houston is three times thicker than this alleged nationwide directory??? Does this nationwide directory omit Houston? Omit all big cities? Or is it just a load of crap? Maybe that's it. Yes. And that's why I got rid of it, and hope you enjoy it.

I certainly was much more charming than that while I was listening to his story of properly determining that his uncle's refrigerator needed a new thermometer, but his uncle hired a contractor anyway, who determined it was the thermometer and charged him two hundred dollars to fix it, when he could have just gotten a new thermometer for about thirty or fifty dollars at the most and just been charged five or ten dollars to put it in because a contractor is out to make money, but a repairman is just out to make a living.

It's 4:30pm now; maybe I can walk around our suite for a second and psych myself up to actually work on my project. Right after I check my email again for the fiftieth time today.