Random Selection

August 18, 2009 | Doug

We’ve started doing random drawings for some pretty expensive prizes. This means I had to come up with a way to do random drawings which are fully transparent and fair. Honesty is very important to us.

On the day of random drawings I check http://finance.yahoo.com/gainers?e=us. I take the ticker symbol with the fifth largest % gain at the closing bell for the NYSE. The winners of the random drawing are the email addresses which falls directly after that ticker symbol in alphabetical order*

Not 100% true-and-random. Mr. Spahn, my high school AP Stats teacher, would be a bit disappointed. But it is fully transparent and easy to do. Plus it gives me an excuse to check my stocks at work.

*If an email address starts with something other than a letter then I start with the first letter in the email address.

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