I used to be in a Sunday night bowling league with Sherry & Gordon Grabill here in San Antonio. (You USCC peeps remember Sherry…overnights CitiPhone manager, Sup Gate AVP, great lady!)
Every week, the league would hold a 50/50 raffle with 1 winner chosen. When you had the winning ticket, you’d get 1/2 the pot (money collected) & the league kept the other half for a celebration at season’s end.
They would sell 3 tickets for $1 (6 for $2, 9 for $3, etc.)…everything had to be in multiples of 3 for “full dollar amounts”.
Fine.
At the start of the following season, I make a suggestion at the captains’ meeting that we merely sell 1 ticket for $1, 2 for $2, 3 for $3, etc. (instead of 3 tickets for $1, 6 for $2, 9 for $3).
And we’d simply save on the expense of the tickets we hadda supply & it would be easier to handle. Simpler for everyone.
Perhaps, too simple…
“Oh, no, Mike, you can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause then you wouldn’t have as many chances to win!”
💥 < my brain exploding!
“What?!? If you sell $10 worth of tickets, whether you have 1 ticket out of 10 or 3 tickets out of 30, it’s the SAME EXACT ODDS!!! 1/10 = 3/30. You have a 10% chance of winning…no matter what!”
“No you don’t, Mike! With the current way, we have 3 times as many chances to win!”
“But so does everyone else!”
“No, you’re so wrong, Mike!”
“And I suppose if we sold 100 tickets for $1, you’d have a 100 times better chance of winning???”
“You don’t understand! Go sit down!”
I punched myself really hard about the head. Repeatedly.
I then went over to the bar to drown my sorrows & check prices for a lobotomy.
I ordered a beer.
But instead of giving the young lady a $1 bill, I gave her 4 quarters…
…and, damnit, that beer tasted 4 times as good as it normally does!!!
Thank you so much for listening!
Posted in: Stranger Than Fiction
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