[nfbcs] Drawings

[Aaron Cannon]

RIGHT. Yeah, that's certainly one way to deal with it. I would be a little nervous though, denormalizing your data like that. Leaves too much room for human error.

There's probably some formula one could apply to the rand column, which would take as a variable x, equaling the number of tickets bought by each user, and that returns a modified random variable, which is an adjusted value, so that it is as likely to win as x tickets.

It may be as simple as generating x random numbers, and only returning the lowest of them. Not sure that that can be done without using VBScript or not though.

Hopefully that's sufficiently coherent. I had a somewhat involved surgery on Friday morning, and I'm on some brain-stiring meds. Pretty sure I shouldn't even be on here.

Aaron 

Aaron

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> On Jul 13, 2016, at 16:22, Steve Jacobson via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Aaron,
> 
> If a row is created for each ticket purchased, that really should take care
> of multiple ticket purchases by increasing the chance.  If duplicate rows
> cause a problem, one could number each of the duplicate rows to make them
> unique.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Steve Jacobson
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Cannon via
> nfbcs
> Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2016 3:53 PM
> To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Aaron Cannon <cannona at fireantproductions.com>
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Drawings
> 
> This can easily be done with Excel.
> 
> http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/03/how-to-sort-a-list-randomly-in-excel/
> 
> After the steps in that article, the person in the top row is the winner.
> 
> If you need more winners, how you get them will depend on whether you want
> to exclude people who have already won, or not. Also, this technique will
> result in each person having an equal chance of winning. This is great for
> door prizes, but not so great for raffles, where the more tickets a person
> buys, the more likely they are to win.
> 
> 
> --
> This message was sent from a mobile device
> 
> 
>>> On Jul 13, 2016, at 14:32, Steve & Shannon Cook via nfbcs
>> <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi All, 
>> 
>> Could someone recommend a way to put a list of names in a software program
>> and have the computer draw the winner?  I am looking in to a new way for
>> door prizes for our state convention in October.  Using JAWS 17 and
> Windows
>> 10.  Thanks in advance!
>> 
>> Steve Cook
>> Steve on Dice World: Steve6009
>> Steve on Twitter: @SteveCook67
>> 
>> 
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