Estapa Youkhana FST Dewey 3/25/13 Pluck-A-Duck I.

I. DESCRIPTION, RULES & DIRECTIONS Pluck-A-Duck is a seemingly simple yet complex game. To play this game the player must first pay a fee of five dollars. Then the player must choose one duck from the bucket which contains all the ducks floating in the water. The player will then look on the bottom of the duck. If the duck that the player picks up has a quarter on the bottom then the player wins the grand prize of 100 dollars. The player must re-pay if they would like to play again. If the duck that the player picks up has a penny on the bottom then the player loses and does not win anything. They must re-pay another five dollars to play again. If the duck that the player picks up has a nickel on the bottom then the player wins a minor prize. They must re-pay if they would like to play again. If the duck that the player picks up has a dime on the bottom then the player will place the duck outside the pool of water as to not be picked again, and then pick a different duck from the pool of water. This time if the player draws a duck with a quarter or nickel they will win the prize for whichever one they picked. If they pick a duck with a penny then they will not win anything and lose the game. The player will have to re-pay if they would like to play again.

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Figure 1. Figure 1 shows the ducks in the bucket. This is the setup for our carnival game.

II. THEORETICAL PROBABILITY I: The sample space of this game is: Win Major Prize, Win Minor Prize, Lose, choose a re-pick and then win a Major Prize on the next pick, choose a re-pick and then win a Minor Prize on the next pick, choose a re-pick and then Lose on the next pick. The probability of winning a Major prize, or P (major prize) = 1/24. This can be shown by first calculating the probability of winning a grand prize on the first try. This is 1/25 since there are 25 total ducks but only one duck with the grand prize. Next you have to find the probability of winning the grand prize after choosing a retry. This is 1/25 which is the chance of a retry multiplied by 1/24 which is the probability of winning the grand prize on the second try. The total is 1/600. Next add that to the probability of winning the major prize on the first try to get a total of 1/24 or about .0416. The chance of winning the Minor Prize, or P(minor prize) = 1/3. This can be calculated in a similar way to the major

Estapa Youkhana FST Dewey 3/25/13 prize but you have to change a few numbers. The chance of winning a minor prize on the first try is 8/25. This is because there are 8 ducks with the minor prize out of the 25 total ducks. Next calculate the probability of winning the minor prize on the second duck. This is 1/25 multiplied by 8/24 which is about 1/75. Then you have to add that to the probability of winning the minor prize on the first try to get a total of 1/3 or about .333. The probability of a loss is 0.625, which is the probability of a loss on the first try (0.6) added to the probability of losing in a second try (0.25). A good check to see that all of the probabilities calculated are correct, is to add them all up and see if they equal 1, which they do. All values were calculated taking the perspective of the player.
P(grand prize) P(minor prize) P(Lose)

0.0416 0.333 0.625

Figure 2. Figure 1 shows the chart displaying the probabilities of all the outcomes the game.

III. THEORETICAL PROBABILITY II: The amount of money that is expected to be made per trial is 17 cents. This is figured by calculating the expected value. To do this, you must take the probability of winning the grand prize, winning the minor prize and losing. Then find how much money is either made or lost in the players perspective. The probability of winning nothing is 5/8, the probability of winning the grand prize is 1/24, the probability of winning a minor prize is 1/3. If the player wins nothing it will be a loss of five dollars because the game costs five dollars to play. If the player wins a minor prize it will be a loss of 3 dollars because the minor prize costs the operator 2 dollars to buy. If the player wins the major prize it will be

Estapa Youkhana FST Dewey 3/25/13 a gain of 95 dollars because the major prize is 100 and the game costs five dollars to play. To find the expected value multiply each items probability by the amount the player will win or lose then add them all up. This will come out to be an average of approximately 17 cents profit for the operator each time a person plays the game. Win Nothing Earnings Probability -5 0.625 Win Minor Prize -3 0.333 Win Major Prize 95 0.0416

Figure 3. Figure 3 shows the probability distribution chart. This chart was used to calculate the expected value of the carnival game. Each prize has a corresponding probability and value. To calculate the earnings for the prize multiply the earnings by the probability. EX: -5 * .625 = -3.125 For the minor prize which is a large lollipop that costs $2, there is a loss of $3 for the player, multiplied by its probability of one-third, which leads to a value of -1. For the grand prize of $100, there is a gain of $95 for the player, multiplying this by the probability of 0.0416 gives you the value of 3.95. Once all of these are combined and totaled, the expected value comes out to be about -17 cents. It is important to note that these values were calculated in the perspective of the player, in which case a net loss is actually a net gain for the operator.

Estapa Youkhana FST Dewey 3/25/13 IV. RELATIVE FREQUENCIES: Simulation 1: Playing the Game One way in which the game was simulated was by playing it 50 times. After 50 runs, there were 2 grand prizes won, 17 minor prizes won, and 31 losses. The relative frequency of winning the game after the 50 trials was 0.04, very close to our theoretical probability of 0.0416. The money that would have been raised1 by the operator through these 50 runs of the game added up to be $16. The amount raised is quite larger than what would be expected with an operator's gain of 17 cents per trial, which leads to an expected gain of $8.60 for the operator.

Simulation 2: Online Number Generator In the 2nd simulation, an online random number generator was used from the site http://www.random.org/integers. The simulation was conducted by generating numbers 1-25, and assigning lose the numbers 1 through fifteen, retry the number 16, minor prize the numbers 17-24, and winning the grand prize the number 25. We also printed numbers 1-24 in the case the number 16 from the first list was drawn ( a retry). The results of 500 trials of this simulation were recorded and there were a total of 12 wins, 328 losses, and 160 minor prizes. In 500 trials with these results, the game's operator would have made 980 dollars and the relative frequency of winning the grand prize was 0.024. The 980 dollars is quite a bit higher than what we would expect in 500 runs of the game, and the relative frequency is nearly half of the true theoretical probability. This result did occur by chance and does not mean the game is rigged because, according to The Law of Large Numbers, over an infinite amount of time and trials the average money gained would reach 17 cents because there will be just as many results below what we expect to compensate for the ones above what we expect.

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Simulation 3: Java 5,000 trials were conducted through a Java program designed to simulate the game. In the simulation, there were 205 wins, 3,163 losses, and 1,632 minor prizes. The relative frequency of winning the grand prize in this simulation is 0.041, which is almost exactly equal to the theoretical probability which makes sense due to the high amount of trials that were conducted. The program also calculated and printed the amount of money that was raised, which was $1,236. This is slightly more than you would expect for 5,000 trials, which would be an expected 17 cents per trial multiplied by the 5,000 trials which gives us an expected value of $850 over 5,000 trials.

V. SUMMARY: Pluck-A-Duck is a terrific money maker. This is because it will make, on average, a dollar every time a person plays the game. The expected value is 17 cents which has good room for profit. Theoretically, we see that the game has very low probabilities of winning and because of how slim the probability of wining is, we can have a grand prize of 100 dollars and still be making money. There is also no way that a player can truly know what their chances are because the coins are underneath, and the prize of 100 dollars will seem easy to win through such a simple game. The simulations conducted also showed us that this game can clearly raise fairly large amounts of money and that it has a lot of

Estapa Youkhana FST Dewey 3/25/13 potential if used in a fundraiser. This game would make a good choice for a real carnival because it is not too complex, but yet not too simple. It will easily fool the player into thinking they can win a lot of money when in reality they are actually almost always losing money. Even when a player wins, which is a fairly rare occasion, it is not a big deal because through many repeated trials, The Law of Large Numbers tells us we will keep getting closer and closer to the amount expected to be made. Also, as we calculated earlier, through each game the operator can expect to gain 17 cents (the player can expect to lose this amount in each trial), which can lead us to a very high profit margin though many people playing the game. The game is also very flexible. If the operator would like to make a higher profit all he has to do is lower the prize money by a small amount and the average earnings will go up. If no one is playing the game raise the prize money (not too much higher though or else the operator may lose money.)