3 Colours = A Quindecillion is the name given to a game of chance where the solution is won by whoever generates the exact matching pattern to a simple diagram containing 3 colours arranged on an 12x8 grid
The odds against winning are appropriately enormous, but to avoid any confusion via the use of any numerals or language, the game is totally visual, based on a simple colouring-in process. This takes the form of filling in a grid of 96 circles in either red or yellow or choosing to leave them blank. There is no specified number to be filled or not filled. For example, you could decide to only colour in two circles in yellow, or 48 colours in red and one in yellow or 92 circles in yellow and 3 in red and one in white.
It is this simple set of choices that generates this number of permutations:
6,362,685, 441,135,942,358, 474,828,762,538, 534,230,890,216,321 (hb forced me to fragment the number - [a quindecillion?] as it was too long to publish!)
To win the game, the submitted image must match exactly the one that's created each day by a basic random generator. I leave it to others to design the infrastructure that consists of machines that select payment for participation, then scan, record, verify and copy the submitted visual for automatic comparison to the solution, and provide any reward.
The images explain more by providing an example along with an pic of the apparatus on which it's based (which I own), containing 48 removable pegs.-- xenzag, Jan 05 2020 tumblr pics https://sodabred.tu...alfbaked-idea-for-a [xenzag, Jan 05 2020] Universal slide show http://babelia.libr...info/slideshow.html640x416, 4096 colors [pocmloc, Jan 10 2020] Luis Borges' story https://babelia.lib...bel.info/about.html [xenzag, Jan 10 2020] The fundamental principle of lotteries:
"For one player to win big, all the others have to lose small".
You'll make more money standing outdoors and waiting to catch a meteorite - a rare event, but they sell for a lot of money-- 8th of 7, Jan 05 2020 "Cui bono" ?
Lotteries are run to generate a financial return for the organizer.
Since the UN could not run a bath, let alone a lottery, and is woefully inefficient and bureaucratic, any gains would be dissipated by internal friction.
NGOs could do it, but there needs to be appropriate motivation, i.e. financial or socio-political gain, to justify the activity.
We suggest that, to ensure success, you base your project on the fundamentally greedy, selfish and venal aspects of humans. That way, you can't be surprised or disappointed.-- 8th of 7, Jan 05 2020 A penny wouldn't pay to move the penny.-- Voice, Jan 05 2020 You've failed to understand the idea.(sighs) It's not about the payment system. I couldn't care less about that, or the outcome of the lottery etc. It's all about the input method of generating an almost infinitely large permutation using just three colours to create a unique pattern on a simple grid.-- xenzag, Jan 05 2020 // You've failed to understand the idea.(sighs) //
... and that's an accident, right ?
<Snigger/>
<Notes that it is January and therefore time to renew membership of the Winding Up Xenzag club/>
The minimum threshold is probably calculable.
The transaction cost is a fixed amout of the wager, irrespective of the total wager value; plus you have to add the profit to the organizer required to motivate them to run the system. As the total revenue stream increases, the percentage siphoned off as profit is likely to reduce. There will be a hierarchical administration, but once established - and presuming that the platform is fully digital and can be scaled at minimal extra cost - then it's a matter of what return the shareholders will accept, which needs to be commensurate with the yield of other market-traded investments.
Baseline model: Community organization raffle.
The fixed costs are very small; a book of raffle tickets costs (say) USD $2, and are sold by unpaid volunteers. Selling 100 tickets at USD $1 each brings in USD $100 (durrrrr ....) and offsetting fixed costs allows half the take to be spent on prizes and the other half is "profit" for the organization.
(In reality the economics are different because (a) purchasers are motivated not by the potential reward, but by a wish to support the organization, and (b) prizes are often donated (because of (a)) and thus the actual costs are much lower and the profit much higher).
Scaling to a national or international scheme, the actual economics are the same. The key is a very low unit transaction cost.
There is, however, the issue of "personal lifestyle impact". In the developed world, the prize needs to be significant enough to be "life changing" - probably a minimum of 20 x average annual income - to drive participation. In the third world, even winning 5 x annual income could have a huge lifestyle impact where survival margins are narrow.
As Terry Pratchett points out, "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life" ...-- 8th of 7, Jan 05 2020 I'm going to edit the idea and remove all lottery references. (done) No more lottery.-- xenzag, Jan 05 2020 "Cui bono"
I dunno. Bono is getting rather aged, and is less of a figure for the post-millenial crowd.-- RayfordSteele, Jan 05 2020 Please read again. The apparatus with the pegs was used to provide the basis for the idea. My time here is up.-- xenzag, Jan 05 2020 //The house always wins.//
In this case, the house would always win, except in the unlikely possibility that somebody did actually hit the jackpot. At which point the company would declare bankruptcy, the CEO would still have won (having been paid a huge salary with copious bonuses from prior takings), but all the workers would be laid off without their last months pay, and the 'winner' would see very little of their prize.-- Loris, Jan 06 2020 ahhhhhhhhh...... is there no end to this? "Who is responsible for the failure to undestand this idea?" that would be me I suppose. Will keep on Tumblr.-- xenzag, Jan 06 2020 It's a lottery, where the innovation is in the medium wherein the winning "number" is represented. Seems like a perfectly good HB idea to me: [+]-- pertinax, Jan 09 2020 Some innovations humanity really really needs, yesterday.-- wjt, Jan 10 2020 I have actually created another version with an 11x9 grid and this one generates: 171 792 506 910 670 443 678 820 376 588 540 424 234 035 840 667 permutations-- xenzag, Jan 10 2020 Someone else has already built an automated version with 4096^266240 (~10^961755) permutations. You can see all of them at the Universal Slide Show <link>.-- pocmloc, Jan 10 2020 I am well aware of.... see link to Luis Borges' wonderful story-- xenzag, Jan 10 2020 //Who is responsible for the failure to undestand this idea?//
// I am well aware of... [Jorge Luis Borges' “The Library Of Babel” story]//
So if you're not just really excited about the number of permutations a combinatorial explosion can give you, and this idea isn't about a lottery which never pays out, then what is it?
Perhaps you're trying to encourage people to use cryptographic techniques to determine, or otherwise hack the "basic random generator"?-- Loris, Jan 10 2020 Why don't you try your luck? Draw up the circles based on the visual I posted on Tumblr; then colour them in as you wish and email me the results. Who knows, you might even win. You can use a computer if you want, but unless your submission matches what I have, you don't win. The odds are a quindecillion to one.-- xenzag, Jan 10 2020 //Why don't you try your luck? //
If every person currently alive in the world sent you 10 unique queries per day for a million times the current age of the universe, the odds of anyone ever winning (vs a good RNG, and barring side-channel attacks) is still very much less than any particular ticket winning the grand prize of a national lottery.
Even if the reward for winning is being literally deified as the one and only true god, it's probably not worth my time. And I don't think that's within your capabilities.
And your number is about 0.0064 quindecillion, at best.-- Loris, Jan 10 2020 // literally deified as the one and only true god //
You'd have to wait until [MB] goes away on his next all-expenses-paid holiday.
So not very long, actually.-- 8th of 7, Jan 10 2020 //it's probably not worth my time.// What were the odds of you existing as you, exactly as you are at this time and place? Astronomical I would say, yet here you are, at this exact time and exact place as a total individual. It's only 96 circles and 3 colours. If you're not in you can never win. Not winning means you verify the total uniqueness of your combination, so either way, everyone's a winner.-- xenzag, Jan 10 2020 By not competing, I am guaranteed not to win, therefore I am more unique than those foolish enough to enter who have an almost infinitessimally small chance of not not winning?-- pocmloc, Jan 10 2020 // Not winning means you verify the total uniqueness of your combination //
No, you don't. The combinations are not exclusive, therefore the chance of a player duplicating a non-winning combination is 1 in (total number of possible combinations - 1) / (number of players).
Is that correct, class ? <Smirks/>-- 8th of 7, Jan 10 2020 Unless there is a special booby prize for duplicating an already submitted entry.
Checking the submissions against each other might get laborious after a while...-- pocmloc, Jan 10 2020 I already have Max on standby. He's used to counting multiple items as they fly past on a conveyor belt. That's how they know exactly how many grains of sand were used in the concrete mix to build the Shard.-- xenzag, Jan 10 2020 //<Smirks/>//
Humans are not perfectly random and 'mostly' think the same so the chances are that the matching guess patterns will be more common. Since colour and a spacial component is involved, the guess overlap is going to be less than straight lotto numbers.-- wjt, Jan 11 2020 random, halfbakery