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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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17 March 2005 - 9:25 am
The Pepsi/iTunes promotion is rigged. Against me. They claim one in three will win a free song from iTunes, but I am personally one for eighteen. They claim 33.3% chance of success, and I only see a 5.5% success rate. Unacceptable. So Pepsi/iTunes, I bite my thumb at you.
Posted by on 17 March 2005 at 9:25 AM
Comments
Dave, I wanted to let you know that I am one out of one with the Pepsi I-tune contest. 100% !!
Polk
Posted by Jon on 17 March 2005 - 2:27 PM
That's how they rope you in. I was 1 for 1 initially, but since then I've been 0 for 17. I'm sure they have an elaborate scheme in place to make sure you win on your first Pepsi and lose on all subsequent purchases.
Posted by david on 17 March 2005 - 3:15 PM
Actually, now it's 1 for 19.
Posted by david on 17 March 2005 - 3:21 PM
I could probably do some statistics with bell curves and stuff that show this isn't outside of a statistical norm, but I'm too lazy.
Posted by Nathan on 17 March 2005 - 5:28 PM
Well, it's been a while since I've done this, but I think we can use the binomial standard deviation to calculate how likely my scenario is. The binomial standard deviation = SQR{(N*p*(1-p)} where, in this case, N = 19 and p = 1/3. If my math is right, this makes the std dev = 2.05.
In the average case with nineteen tries I should have had 6.33 wins (19 * 1/3). And in 95.4% of all cases I should have been within 2 standard deviations of that average, so I should have had at least 2.23 wins.
Which means that cases like mine happen to only slightly more than 4% of all Pepsi/iTunes contest participants. So I wouldn't think this falls into the case of a "statistical norm," whatever that is.
However, this isn't my forte. Fortunately, my friend Jon -- who is 1 for 1 in this awful contest -- is a math teacher. Perhaps he can weigh in on this with an expert opinion and correct all the mistakes in my statistical analysis.
Posted by david on 17 March 2005 - 6:40 PM
Well, out of 100 people, 4 are gonna get screwed like you. Sorry. :( I was mostly just being a smartass, tho.
Posted by Nathan on 17 March 2005 - 10:50 PM
Being a smartass is a compelling cover, but we all know that you are just a part of the Pepsi/iTunes conspiracy. You rig the game against me and then tell me I'm winning when I'm not. It's straight out of 1984. But I'm not falling for your two plus two make five newspeak. I'm on to the Pepsi/iTunes conspiracy and I plan to expose them for not giving me enough songs.
Posted by david on 17 March 2005 - 11:05 PM