Discussion forum > Suggestions

Fix the Lottery

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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:

--- Quote from: ivy2112 on July 21, 2012, 06:30:53 pm ---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

--- End quote ---

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*....

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