who won the contest

[mnx]

So when do we find out who won the contest?? Looks like I only have a 4.7% or so chance of winning it.... Oh well I tried...

mnx

[Virus]

Well i'm waiting for spdsk8r to give the word. So I can post them.

[oxOGradiusOxo]

It's probably the top three who submitted. I mean, I think one of those guys had like over 50,000+ blocks submitted. What chance does a guy like me have of helping much @ all (my little Cel333 working day and night might be able to only get 200-250 blocks). The people that really needed the equip don't have a chance. Oh well, not complaining, just posting my $0.02 for today.

::sighs:: - Gradius

[Virus]

Well, when the contest first started I thought there would be more big fish. But for the last few day. I realized I stuck out like Whale in a gold fish bowl.

This contest was more of a test (in my mind). Next time i'll disqualify myself. Seeing how I could also be accused of cheating (but I don't).

I would be open to any suggestions on how to fairly pick winners, yet still promote system tweaking.

Take you for instance. You may have a good reason for not taking full advantage of you celeron. But, you have a cel333 which is putting out 214 blocks a day. If you overclocked that to 375. You could be doing 277 blocks a day. A 24% increase in your chances of winning.

I want to get ppl to tweak there systems and improve there odds of winning. There would be no urge to, if everyone who submits has an even change of winning, no matter how much they are cracking.

[spdsk8r]

Sorry about not responding to the winners, my mail server has been down, so I'll try using something like hotmail tonight to notify everyone.

[jeana]

Well, the contest got me to put the client on my father's computers, my fiance's computer, a couple of the computers at work, etc... no way do I have a processor capable of churning out ~900 blocks a day! Also, I had my Celeron overclocked to 504 at night, although with the L2 cache off it's not useful to run at that speed except to crunch RC5 blocks.

As for calculating the odds of winning, even though mnx, for example, has only a 4.7% chance of winning first prize, mnx has an AT LEAST 13.4% chance of winning one of the prizes, by my calculations. I came up with this figure by reasoning that at each drawing, there's a 95.3% chance that mnx will not be drawn. So the chance that mnx is never ever drawn is 95.3% cubed. Subtract this from 1, and we get the probability that mnx will get at least one prize.

Since each winner is probably subtracted from the pool once selected, the odds get even better. If Virus won the first prize, then mnx's chance of winning one of the remaining prizes would go up to over 14%, about 1 in 7 odds.

Sorry if this mini-lecture bored you, but maybe it will make some people feel better.

--Jeana


[This message has been edited by jeana (edited 08-16-99).]

[hai]

I probably didn't win because my stat was only 1/40 of the total blocks for all particiants. Anyway, nice try.

Geez, virus contributed 1/3 of the total blocks. So everyone get 1.5 times odd to win in fact.

[This message has been edited by hai (edited 08-16-99).]