Who do you think will be more disappointed in the following cases:
You are running a raffle to give away iPad. The winner will be picked using raffle tickets. Each person gets either a blue ticket or a yellow ticket. There are 100 each and the tickets are numbered sequentially with blue tickets numbered from 738000 and yellow tickets numbered from 637000. People keep the stub and drop their tickets in a glass bowl (blue and red in same bowl).
Just before you pick a winner you announce – blue tickets are not going to be picked. You hear a collective awww from the audience. Then you go on to pick a yellow ticket and announce the winner.
Who will be more disappointed – 100 blue ticket holders or the 99 yellow ticket holders who did not win.
Say the winning yellow ticket number is 637065. Who will be more disappointed – person with ticket number 637000 or 637066,637064?
Variations:
- What if you handed out 150 blue tickets and only 50 yellow tickets and the rest of the process is the same?
- What if you were raffling two iPads instead of one and still disqualify all blue ticket holders?
- What if you were raffling two iPads and say one winner per ticket color?
- What if you were raffling two iPads and say both winners will be picked randomly regardless of color?
I have my hypothesis – here it is.
Iterative Path 