I would imagine everyone received this same email, but just in case: http://www.bmwcca.org/node/4786 Forgive my ignorance, but this is the first time I've ever seen the drawing take place. Is that EVERY entry in one bin?
I thought it was curious that my ticket number doesn't contain the same number of digits as the numbers called from the drawing. I'll still win.
The first part of the ticket number is the date on which it was purchased. After that there is an incremental number to make it unique. Good luck!
Thanks for the reply, beastcharmer. Not to be a jerk... but that's a bit disappointing. So the claim that you are "guaranteed a 1 in 5000 chance" is false. Obviously, if 45,000 tickets go in, then you are 1 in 45,000. Even as winners are pulled, it changes to 1 in 44,999 and 1 in 44,998, etc. The more tickets they sell, the lower your odds, regardless of the number of vehicles. They would, in fact, need to pull from a new batch of 5k for each car to uphold that 1 in 5k chance claim.
This is very true. The people involved in marketing the raffle clearly do not understand statistics and the marketing is misleading. I was also disappointed to see all of the entries crammed in there, as the drum has zero chance of randomizing the tickets, due to being so crammed with tickets that there is no possible way of movement when the drum is rotated. If you're going to place that many tickets in a drum, then you need to use a big enough drum to allow free motion on rotation of the drum. I was excited by the success of the raffle, but was unimpressed when I saw the implementation on video.
Agreed! I know that this is for a good cause and all, but fair is fair. It's not like my one measly ticket really had a chance anyway!
Thanks for chiming in, Steve. Any chance this issue would be fixed in the future? Or who I should direct my comments to? I think the best thing they can do is separate the tickets in future years.
The question is if someone buys 5 tickets, are there 5 entries in the barrel for John Q. Ticketholder?
No. My comment is that each ticketholder's odds are far far less than the claimed 1 in 5000. HOW they mix the tickets has no affect on this. Because they are grouping all of the tickets together, your ticket that you bought for a 1 in 5000 chance actually only has a 1 in 45,000 chance (or however many tickets they sold; I'm saying 45k because I believe they were up to 9 cars). Like someone else said, its going to a cause, and that's great, and its not like I'm asking for a refund or anything. I would just like the advertising to be accurate. I'm an editor, so it is in my nature to nitpick.
Well, yes you are one in 45,000 numbers in the barrel. But a hand will reach into that barrel 9 times looking for your ticket, so I think the "1 in 5000" is a fair description of the chances you'll get picked, don't you?
No, I don't. It just isn't how statistics work. As I said above, even on the ninth car, your odds have only gone down to 1 in 44,992. To get to 1 in 5000 out of a barrel of 45k tickets, they will either have to give away 40,001 cars or you'd have to buy 39,992 tickets. To try and put it another way, in a 1 in 5000 drawing, you could buy 5000 tickets and be guaranteed a win. Do you think you are guaranteed a win in this drawing if you buy 5000? Anyone who thinks so, I'd LOVE to play poker against.
Yup, you are exactly correct. I hate to say it but BMWCCA is on very dangerous ground by advertising 1 in 5000 odds of winning when that's clearly not true. I'm no lawyer, but I would be fairly confident that the misleading advertising could be used by someone if they wanted to push it in court. In order for this to get closer to the advertised odds, they would have to break the entries up into 5000 ticket lots before the drawing. I have no idea how they could handle the odds for the main prizes. Personally, I would just state it as being 1 in (insert number of entries).
So If someone buys 100 tickets the first day, they all go into a standalone drawing? One ticket is pulled and he/she is no longer eligible to win in the remaining drawings? Would it be better to state there is a 9 in 45000 chance of winning?
The 1 out of 5000 probability is an accurate statistic. Honestly, I had my doubts after reading this thread. However, after I dusted off the statistics brain cells in my noggin, I performed the calculations for myself. Here's how to calculate it from this year's raffle data: Number of tickets purchased by a member: 1 Number of prizes awarded: 9 Number of tickets sold: 45,000 Now, the way to calculate the probability of winning at least once is to first calculate the probability of losing, and then subtract it from 1. Here's how that breaks down for each of the nine drawings: Code: Tickets Not Purchased Tickets Probability by Member in Drum of Losing --------- ---------- ----------- 44999 45000 0.999977778 44998 44999 0.999977777 44997 44998 0.999977777 44996 44997 0.999977776 44995 44996 0.999977776 44994 44995 0.999977775 44993 44994 0.999977775 44992 44993 0.999977774 44991 44992 0.999977774 Next, you have to multiply the losing probabilities from each of the drawings. That equals 0.9998. Finally, subtract it from one: 1 - 0.9998 = 0.0002. That is the probability of winning at least once. So, how does that number compare to the stated chances of winning? 1/5000 = 0.0002. Conclusion: no need to sue the club over misstated chances of winning! On a side note: the staff of BMW CCA would like to congratulate the winners of the 2012 Car of Your Dreams Raffle, and give a huge THANK YOU to everyone who purchased a ticket for making this year a resounding success!
