Fix the Lottery

[KCB38]

The lottery needs fixing. I and many other players feel like it is rigged, especailly when a player wins all 3 draws(Which happened today, 7/19) Stop with complicated formulas and just make it entirely random. And maybe make it so that the #1 winner cant win 2cnd or 3rd place.

[ViperZeroOne]

Wait, wait, wait...  For the last time, there's NOTHING wrong with the lottery!

With a lottery every TICKET has a chance to win.  

Say you buy 100 tickets, that's 100 chances to win over the 3 draws.

You win first place, you still have 99 tickets in the draw for second and third.
You win second place, you still have 98 tickets in the draw for third.
You win third place, you have 97 tickets that didn't win.

How exactly is that unfair?  It's perfectly fair!

Come on people, that's how lotteries work.  Every ticket you buy has a chance to win.  Just because you purchased 1 ticket and someone else purchased 1000 of them doesn't mean the person who purchased 1000 should have all their tickets disqualified after they win one of the 3 draws.

I think it would be much more unfair to disqualify a player after they win a single draw.

[☣2crzy4uall☣]

It's not rigged, the more tix you buy the higher chance of winning, that simple. so when someone wins all three keep in mind they most likely lost money buying into it

[SalsaInABowl]

Let's learn some math everybody. I know you hate school, I don't wanna have to teach in summer...but it's not rigged. Let's take this back to second grade, in probability.

There are 100 tickets in the lottery. Mr snapey bought 5. Mr Cazually bought 75. Mr Cazual won first and second, while I won third. Why did this happen? Well let's see. What percent of tickets were mine? 5%. What about Cazual? 75%. So Cazual would win 3/4 of the times, assuming theoretic probability. I would win one out of 20 times, again assuming theoretic probability. Rigged? You tell me.

[ViperZeroOne]

Let's learn some math everybody. I know you hate school, I don't wanna have to teach in summer...but it's not rigged. Let's take this back to second grade, in probability.

There are 100 tickets in the lottery. Mr snapey bought 5. Mr Cazually bought 75. Mr Cazual won first and second, while I won third. Why did this happen? Well let's see. What percent of tickets were mine? 5%. What about Cazual? 75%. So Cazual would win 3/4 of the times, assuming theoretic probability. I would win one out of 20 times, again assuming theoretic probability. Rigged? You tell me.

Haha, I actually have to adjust your mathematical equations cause the probability is PER DRAW.  I'm also going to assume that Snapey actually has 25 tickets to make the 100%.

First draw, Cazual has a 75% chance and you have a 25% chance.
(assume he wins)
Second draw, Cazual has a 74% chance and you have a 25% chance.
(assume he wins again)
Third draw, Cazual has a 73% chance and you STILL have only a 25-26% chance.

Odds are, he's gonna win the third one too.  The odds aren't that you will win 1 out of 4 times.  The odds are you only have a 1 in 4 chance PER DRAW.  That still means you can easily loose every draw.

[Matty585]

I'm not an expert...but I think it would be very hard not to have complicated computer fomulas. The computer is not a human, it can not just say "Oo what's this? Oh may as well pick it...and Mr Matty won!"

[iGenerator]

Okay so the thing that makes the lottery so hard to win in real life, is the numbers and balls with that number there are 40 or so balls and like 6 normal ones and one colored ball. You must get every one correct to win all the money. In real life there are also millions of combinations of the numbers. Opticrafts version is much simpler, its just a random draw of peoples names out of a hat

[optical]

VipzerZeroOne is completely correct.

The lottery is entirely random and fair. It is just random selection without replacement.

1000 tickets bought.
Chance of first prize = 1/1000 per ticket
Chance of second prize = 1/999 per ticket (1st place ticket removed)
Chance of third prize = 1/998 per ticket (1st & 2nd place ticket removed)

No complicated formula's, no rigging. It is more of a lucky dip or raffle then a lottery, technically.

[raul7legend]

1000 tickets bought.
Chance of first prize = 1/1000 per ticket
Chance of first prize = 1/999 per ticket (1st place ticket removed)
Chance of first prize = 1/998 per ticket (1st & 2nd place ticket removed)

FTFY

Also, your attitude in this topic is disrespectful, snape.
On a lottery earlier I held 90% of the tickets, and I did win all three of them.

[ViperZeroOne]

1000 tickets bought.
Chance of first prize = 1/1000 per ticket
Chance of first prize = 1/999 per ticket (1st place ticket removed)
Chance of first prize = 1/998 per ticket (1st & 2nd place ticket removed)

FTFY

Also, your attitude in this topic is disrespectful, snape.
On a lottery earlier I held 90% of the tickets, and I did win all three of them.

With 90% of the tickets you SHOULD win all 3 of them.  Although, there is still a 10% chance that someone is gonna get lucky.  *LOL*

[tiggy26668]

soooo, clearly if u have more tickets u have the higher chance of winning..... but out of curiosity how are the tickets stored? does it just use a random number generator and whoever has that number ticket lets say wins, or are the tickets stored in some sort of stack/list where the winner is the ticket at the index defined by the random number? more so, if they're stored in a list/stack is it being shuffled before all/each draw or at all? ya gotta keep in mind that random numbers in computers are "pseudo-random"  or "kinda random" and do have a tendency to fall in certain ranges given the algorithm used... point being if u have a giant chunk of 100 tickets in one section of this list/stack it can in fact give u an unfair advantage and increase your chance of winning.

of course this is all here say as i do not know the inner workings of the lottery, just some thoughts.

*edit* i hate criticizing without any contribution so a way to make it more random...

pseudo-code, would shuffle the tickets a random number of times....

(click to show/hide)

def Shuffle(Tickets)
   OldTickets = Tickets
   NewTickets = []
   rand = randint(0,9)

   for n in range(0,rand)
      while OldTickets
         i = randint(0,OldTickets.length)
         NewTickets.append(OldTickets)
         OldTickets.pop(i)

      OldTickets = NewTickets

   return NewTickets

[Chief149]

public class Lottery
{
    private ArrayList<String> tickets; //the list that holds all the tickets purchased by the player

    public Lottery()
    {
        tickets = new ArrayList<String>(); //don't worry about this part of the code if you don't understand it
    }

    public void ticketsBought(String playerName, int numTickets) //when a player does /lottery buy numTickets command
    {
        //add the player name to the ticket list for each ticket they bought
        //if a player did /lottery buy 10 to buy 10 tickets, then their name is added to the ticket list 10 times
        for(int a = 1, a <= numTickets, a++)
        {
            tickets.Add(playerName);
        }
    }

    public void drawWinners()
    {
        //create a completely random number
        int randomNumber = (int)(Math.random()*(tickets.count()-1));
        //That random number will be the number on the list that is chosen starting with 0. So if the number 2 is
        //randomly generated, then the system goes to item number 2 on the list.
        String winner1 = tickets.get(randomNumber); //this is winner 1 randomly selected
        tickets.remove(randomNumber); //remove the individual drawn ticket from the list
       
        //repeat the above code to get winner2 and winner3

        //print winners and other crap to the chat
        //award players with their money
    }
}

That's how it works.

[ViperZeroOne]

That looks completely random to me...  I don't see how you could push the randomizer to be even more random than that.

[ivy2112]

I won the lottery like cazual
if u look my signature
The prize pool was 5450$
i bhought ( by accididnt ) 645 tickets ( i wanted to buy 64 tickets )
I had ~ 93% of the prize pool tickets
i had a big chance to win as viper already said

[ViperZeroOne]

I won the lottery like cazual
if u look my signature
The prize pool was 5450$
i bhought ( by accididnt ) 645 tickets ( i wanted to buy 64 tickets )
I had ~ 93% of the prize pool tickets
i had a big chance to win as viper already said

Exactly, with a 93% chance on ALL 3 DRAWS you're pretty much guaranteed to win them all.  Unless one of the other players has a horseshoe up their *cough*....