Show us how smart you are:
http://www.letsrun.com/letsruncontest/wccontest.php
Get started as the first pick is due by 5pm eastern tomorrow.
Distance events plus mens 100, 200, women's 400 amd men's shot.
Show us how smart you are:
http://www.letsrun.com/letsruncontest/wccontest.php
Get started as the first pick is due by 5pm eastern tomorrow.
Distance events plus mens 100, 200, women's 400 amd men's shot.
250 grand!??? im goin for it.
Man, this is one phony contest.
Could you post the odds of winning this contest?
The odds are small enough that they offer the $250K prize.The odds are good enough that they would spread the payment over 10 years.
rippy cripple wrote:
Could you post the odds of winning this contest?
when i win, ill buy everyone a round of drinks
I think this is a badass idea! IAAF.org should have contests like this, it's like playing Fantasy Track & Field. Good idea Wejo!
Think about the odds of hitting the pick 6 at the race track.
This is basically a pick 14 -- with the added difficulty of ALSO picking 2nd and 3rd place correctly.
The odds are HUGE.
If there were only 3 people in each event and they all had equal chances of finishing in each spot, the odds would be 2^42 or 1 in 4 trillion. Any probability d!cks want to check my math on that one? You will hit the Powerball 30,000 times before you catch a whiff of this one. Good luck!
the430miler wrote:
250 grand!??? im goin for it.
I just want a T-shirt.
You can't figure out the odds of winning this because you can't figure the odds of any particular outcome in any particular race. For example, are the odds of Sanya Richards winning the four hundred 65%, or 70%, or 75%?
You can make some approximations of the odds by making some assumptions. Let's make them fairly favorable assumptions: say there is, on average, a 40% chance of picking an event winner. Oftentimes, there's a pretty clear favorite, but that's not always the case, so 40% seems really high. Let's put the odds of picking the second-place finisher at 25%, and the odds of picking the third-place finisher at 20%. Again, these all intuitively seem to be pretty high percentages--there's usually at least five people with a realistic chance of finishing #3.
The odds of picking a perfect event, then, are 2%; the odds of picking all 14 events correctly would be approximately 1/610,352,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one in 610 sextillion, 352 quintillion).
Since the prize is $250,000, the expected value of a ballot would be about 1/2,441,410,000,000,000,000 of a dollar, meaning you'd have to fill out about two quintillion, 441 quadrillion, 410 trillion ballots for your expected return to be a buck. Assuming it takes you five minutes to fill out a ballot, it would take you 232,090,000,000 years to earn a penny. This is widely considered to be a substandard wage.
Even if you were so incredibly trackbrilliant that you could predict the results of each place with 70% accuracy, there would only be about a 1/3,205,401 chance of scoring the perfect ballot, which would give you an hourly wage of about $0.94.
Still an awesome game--it'll give you something to root for even in events that you otherwise wouldn't pay much attention to, and it'll be fun to give it a shot.
P.S. Somebody might want to check that math.
SO YOU'RE SAYING I HAVE A CHANCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! NICE, I can live with those odds....
txRUNNERgirl wrote:
the430miler wrote:250 grand!??? im goin for it.
I just want a T-shirt.
Me too. When I win I'm going to trade my 250Gr to the second placer for his/her shirt.
Lorenzo the Magnificent wrote:
txRUNNERgirl wrote:I just want a T-shirt.
Me too. When I win I'm going to trade my 250Gr to the second placer for his/her shirt.
You could sell it on eBay for twice as much.
your measure of opportunity cost is wrong unless of course people decide to not work and compete in the contest with the plan to fill out so many ballots that they'd have to win.
Most likely people will do it in their free time and probably will enjoy doing it. I find it hard to argue that there are any costs associated with the ballot and if there are, they are infinitely small. Thus as long as there is at least an infinitely small chance of winning, the expected payout is at least that of the cost. In the minimum people are indifferent to the decision of filling out a ballots, but I would tend to think there is zero costs associated and any rational person should submit a ballot.
Feel free to check my math.
If I win, I'm going to go pro. 25grand/year should be more than enough to get a room somewhere out in the boonies and still have enough for pasta and travel to meets. Maybe if I run fast enough, they'll even throw in a letsrun singlet!
Thursday, June 21, 2007
10:00 a.m. 110m Hurdles jr. men decathlon
10:30 High Jump jr. men final
11:00 Long Jump jr. women heptathlon
11:00 Discus Throw jr. men decathlon
11:20 110m Hurdles jr. men 1st round
11:45 100m Hurdles jr. women 1st round
12:10 p.m. 100m jr. women 1st round
12:30 100m jr. men 1st round
12:30 Javelin Throw jr. women heptathlon
12:30 Shot Put jr. men final
12:45 Long Jump jr. men final
12:50 800m jr. women 1st round
1:00 Long Jump jr. women final
1:10 800m jr. men 1st round
1:30 3000m jr. women final
1:45 3000m Steeplechase jr. men final
1:45 Pole Vault jr. men decathlon
2:00 100m Hurdles jr. women final
2:10 110m Hurdles jr. men final
2:15 Discus Throw jr. men final
2:20 100m jr. women final
2:30 100m jr. men final
2:30 Shot Put jr. women final
2:40 800m jr. women heptathlon
hursday EDT
STart Lists:
http://www.usatf.org/events/2007/USAOutdoorTFChampionships/startLists/2007-06-21.asp
4:15 3000m Steeplechase women 1st round
4:30 Javelin Throw "A" jr. men decathlon
4:45 800m women 1st round
5:05 800m men 1st round
5:15 Pole Vault jr. men final
5:25 400m Hurdles men 1st round
5:30 Javelin Throw "B" jr. men decathlon
5:30 Hammer Throw jr. women final
5:50 1500m women 1st round
6:10 400m women 1st round
6:20 Triple Jump women final
6:35 400m men 1st round
7:00 1500m jr. men decathlon
7:00 Javelin Throw men final
7:10 100m women 1st round
7:35 100m men 1st round
8:00 5000m jr. men final
8:20 10,000m men final
8:55 10,000m women final
UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:
If there were only 3 people in each event and they all had equal chances of finishing in each spot, the odds would be 2^42 or 1 in 4 trillion. Any probability d!cks want to check my math on that one? You will hit the Powerball 30,000 times before you catch a whiff of this one. Good luck!
More like 6^14 or 1 in 78 billion. There are 3! possible results for each event in your scenario, not 2^3.
probability d!ck wrote:
More like 6^14 or 1 in 78 billion. There are 3! possible results for each event in your scenario, not 2^3.
You are correct. Thanks.
And of course, there's the underlying fallacy with prevaling economic theory: people aren't rational!