I couldn’t bear to watch the Pepsi billion show last night more than about two minutes past the chimp playing with his balls (pool balls you pervs), but since there’s no mention of a brand-new billionaire on a Google search I take it no one picked the winning number?
Anyone watch the show all the way through? I couldn’t hack the idea of Jamie Kennedy taking contestants on whacky stunts or whatever shite was coming next so I pulled the plug until the disappointing Sex and the City season finale.
Don’t know about the billion dollars, but that wasn’t the season finale for Sex and the City. New episodes resume next year some time. I think there are four or five left.
I sorta watched the Pepsi show during the commercial breaks in the Conan O’brian 10th anniversery special.
The guy remaining at the end with the “closest” number won $1 million. Then they went through revealing the digits of his and the billion dollar number. Four of the six matched (of course leaving the two differing digits until last).
So you’re right, no one won the billion dollars. But at one point he had a 1 in 100 chance.
Oh now you’ve done it. You better hope none of our resident math geeks see your post, or you’re gonna have formulae and proofs coming out the wazoo showing you exactly how wrong your “1 in 100” assertion is. This ain’t gonna be pretty.
And HBO can call the handful of eps it has stocked up for spring part of this season if it wants to but AFAIC two parts of the same season aren’t separated by six months of repeats. But HBO’s “season” designations are a rant for another day.
I only saw the last portion (when only a few contestants were left) and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
It seemed as though they offered a certain guaranteed prize to someone who would quit the game and if no one took it, someone would be picked and sent away with nothing. The last person left would get at least a million, possibly a billion.
But then there were also some numbers, and something about the person who actually got the million ‘having the winning number all along’. So if the person who had it all along had left, who would have been picked; was it always random?
Also, what were the actual odds of winning the billion once you have the million? They showed two six-digit numbers and matched them up one by one - I find it almost impossible to believe that these were both randomly generated six-digit numbers, since he had 4 matches before losing.
(If that were true, he would have had a 1 in 100 chance of winning, I just don’t believe that’s the case).
Assuming that they delliberately planned to reveal the correct digits first, then his chances peaked at 1 in (number of possible numbers with 4 or more digits right). Which would be 1 in 10[sup]2[/sup]*(6 choose 2), or 1 in 1500. At least, if I haven’t made an error in my calculations, which I probably have.
And they probably designed the challenge such that there was a very low chance of anybody winning, and took out an insurance policy in case someone did.
Thank Christ they didn’t use three doors…
I think that you’ve overcounting the situations in which he has more than 4 digits correct.
If I understand the game correctly (and I am making absolutely no claim in that regard), then the probability is a bit more complicated, anyway (although I think it’s rather odd to say that his probability changed as the numbers were revealed; he had the same number before the first four numbers were revealed as afterwards). Apparently, the ten people who got closest to the correct number made it to the final round. Then, whoever survived the final round got to compare his number, and that of the other nine finalists, to the correct number. If any of them had matched, he would have won. Given such conditions, the probability that he would get at least 4 correct is actually rather high, and so his probability of winning given 4 correct isn’t much larger than that of winning given that he won the million dollar prize.
I’m not sure what they meant by “closest” (most digits match, difference is lowest, etc), but if anyone had had the correct number to start with, he would have been certain to go to the finals (ignoring the neglible probability of more than 10 getting the correct number). And then his number would have been included in the numbers used by the winner. So I think that the probability of someone winning a billion would be 1-P(no winner)=1-P(particular person loses)^1000=1-(999,999/1,000,000)^1000~=1-e^-(1/1000)=1-.9990004…~=.1%. Which was what I expected it to (I expected the expected value of the billion dollar prize to be in the neighborhood of $1M).
The probability that the winner would have four or more correct numbers, assuming that “closest” means “most matching numbers” would be about .5, which means that P(win|four matching)~=.2%.
Did anyone see the whole thing? I saw a few minutes of it, and most of it was rather boring (who wants to watch a woman roll die after die? This is their idea of entertainment?)
Basically, they picked 1000 people out of all the people who entered the number on their Pepsi bottle cap at the website. Apparently, only about 992 of them showed up. Each of those people got to pick a six digit number (each person’s number had to be different, but I don’t know how they determined what order they’d get to pick in), and the number you’d have to match to win the billion dollars was picked randomly.
They took the ten people who were closest to the number (from what I understand it, the criteria was the number of correct digits in the correct order, if it’s tied, then they count the number of correct digits in any order, then if it’s still tied, the number that’s numerically closest, then if it’s still tied, the lowest number won)
During each round, they were given a chance to buzz in and be guaranteed some money (20,000 for the first round, and 10,000 extra for each round after) . If nobody buzzed in, the person who was farthest away from the number was out of the game. Whoever was left at the end was guaranteed a Million, and if the numbers matched completely, he got a Billion (payed in a baloon payment over 40 years, don’t know it any more specific than that. Would it count as a “baloon payment” if they were payed absolutely nothing until the very end?)
Also, when someone decided to take the money, their number went to whoever won at the end. That would guarantee that if someone got the billion dollar number exactly, the person who was left at the end would win it.
IIRC, according to the rules on the site, the odds of someone winning the billion were about 1:1000
Yes, I watched it (and taped the Conan thing). Aren’t I sad?
Found the payment schedule:
Or a lump sum payment of $250 million. Sweet.
Is the payment schedule for the million the guy actually did win anything like the payment schedule for the hypothetical billion?
If so, that would be pretty pathetic. ($5000 per year for each of years 1 through 20; $10,000 per year for each of years 21 through 39 and a lump sum payment of $710,000 in year 40 – by which time $710,000 will probably be the price of a cheap new car – or an up-front lump sum payment of $250,000. Feh.)
Anybody know what the inhertiance rules on such a prize would be?
For example, if I had won the billion dollars, but died three years later, could I have left the rest of my prize to my heirs, or would the payments stop with my death?
I have not seen anything specific relating to this contest about transferability. But, if it is run like the lotteries are, you die the payments end. They cannot be transfered to heirs and any unpaid balance is not considered part of the estate. They are gambling that if you did win you would croak before year 40.
But you could sell your prize to one of those “we pay cash for your settlement” companies I see on TV. Bet you could get a good deal on it too.
If the prize isn’t transferable, then even if payments do continue after your death they’ll be subject to a kind of double taxation: Your estate will have to pay Income Tax when it receives the prize payments, and then your estate will also have to pay Estate Tax when it distributes the money to your heirs.