EB Xmas Raffle 2018 - Your Santa MOC winners thread

[CopMike]

Hi all

With help from staffer Siegfried, the winner calender is now up & running !

Go here to check if your name won a manatee!!!

 

[Siegfried]

 The calendar images will be delayed a few days... Bit preoccupied.

[Peppermint_M]

Unleash the Manatees! Two days down, plenty more to go 

[adwind]

Wow! Happy Sunday, I'm day 2 winner ))) Prize E!

Really appreciate this amazing tradition! )) 

[sesse]

Never "competed" before, and then a winner on the third day. Yay me! 

[Rick]

Woohoo!

[Peppermint_M]

Aw yeah, gettin' a manatee. 

[MAB]

Do we know the number of verified entries, and whether it is up or down compared to the last few years?

 

[AndersI]

On the second day! Wow - last year I had to wait all the way to Christmas.

Thank You! although now the thrill is gone...

[MAB]

7 hours ago, AndersI said:

On the second day! Wow - last year I had to wait all the way to Christmas.

Thank You! although now the thrill is gone...

So right ...

In the past five years, my stats are:

2013 day 11

2014 day 17

2015 no prize

2016 day 3

2017 day 5

 

The last two years I didn't check the winners list anywhere near as much as I did 2015, maybe once a week just to see who had won. An early win is good for calming the nerves but you lose the thrill of checking every day.

 

[ColletArrow]

7 hours ago, MAB said:

Do we know the number of verified entries, and whether it is up or down compared to the last few years?

@mocbuild101 pegged it at 185 this year, compared to 203 last year. I personally don't have stats further than that.

This is my second year participating, and I didn't win a manatee last time. However, it looks like my chances are better this year. 
Below is my "Probability of winning" sheet, that calculates and shows how the chance of winning a manatee falls over time (as there are fewer prizes per remaining contestants). I posted this link in the Entries thread the other day, but now this one is up I'll link it here too.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l846TgJeM1NQpmIGk__Mn_eg6u8LEUO3jwl8187bJU0/edit?usp=sharing.
Tomorrow's chance stands at 75.4%. Good luck!

[MAB]

13 minutes ago, ColletArrow said:

@mocbuild101 pegged it at 185 this year, compared to 203 last year. I personally don't have stats further than that.

This is my second year participating, and I didn't win a manatee last time. However, it looks like my chances are better this year. 
Below is my "Probability of winning" sheet, that calculates and shows how the chance of winning a manatee falls over time (as there are fewer prizes per remaining contestants). I posted this link in the Entries thread the other day, but now this one is up I'll link it here too.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l846TgJeM1NQpmIGk__Mn_eg6u8LEUO3jwl8187bJU0/edit?usp=sharing.
Tomorrow's chance stands at 75.4%. Good luck!

Yeah, I noticed that on the other thread after posting, although there is at least one new user that registered after the start date so there might be some un-verified entries. Although it is amazing that some of the flagged "new" IDs are actually quite old but have never posted anything. I think I spotted one entry from an ID that is five years old without a single comment!

 

I was wondering about numbers of entries and whether they are up or down, based mainly on this thread:

 

 

[Artanis I]

Manatees winning manatees?!? How perverse!

[koalayummies]

I'm going to sound like a complete fool here and ask for the uninitiated; whats the story with the manatees?

[Artanis I]

3 hours ago, koalayummies said:

I'm going to sound like a complete fool here and ask for the uninitiated; whats the story with the manatees?

A couple of years ago CopMike didn't have photos for the prizes yet so Siegfried used the 'huge manatee' image as a placeholder... and like every good in-joke, it only compounds - now the pictures of the winning entries are also manatee placeholders

[Oky]

Hooray! Only the 4th day (still the 3rd over here on the west coast) and I already got a manatee! Can't wait for the prize reveals now!

Thanks again to CopMike and Siegfried! I'll send my address shortly.

2 hours ago, Artanis I said:

now the pictures of the winning entries are also manatee placeholders

I bet next year the background will also be a manatee. It's manatee madness I tell you!

[Peppermint_M]

What we need is a LEGO manatee, so we can have the full Manatee magic. 

[Siegfried]

10 hours ago, Artanis I said:

now the pictures of the winning entries are also manatee placeholders

...but I'm in the process of adding those... 

[koalayummies]

Thanks CopMike and Siegfried and Eurobricks! And thanks @Artanis I for the Manatee story. I've never been so excited about manatees!

And since I thought Peppermint's Hue-Manatee was hilarious...

Maybe a stretch.

[antp]

Selected on day 5, at least not too much waiting before knowing if I'm selected or not :)

Thanks for organizing that contest/raffle :)

[skeaghshee]

Yeah I won on the 4th. Thank you for doing this raffle every year :)

So excited for this years manatees ;)

[Bricked1980]

Awesome... I have won a prize on Day 5. 

Thanks very much for running this competition.

[Navy Trooper Fenson]

Nice to be winning this early after a two year drought.

This is my favorite christmas tradition.

[tman684]

Apologies if this is not an appropriate place to ask, but the 2011 calendar is not linked like the other past calendars are, is there someplace where I can see what the prizes were? I don't remember what I won that year

[MAB]

On 12/3/2018 at 6:23 PM, ColletArrow said:

@mocbuild101 pegged it at 185 this year, compared to 203 last year. I personally don't have stats further than that.

This is my second year participating, and I didn't win a manatee last time. However, it looks like my chances are better this year. 
Below is my "Probability of winning" sheet, that calculates and shows how the chance of winning a manatee falls over time (as there are fewer prizes per remaining contestants). I posted this link in the Entries thread the other day, but now this one is up I'll link it here too.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l846TgJeM1NQpmIGk__Mn_eg6u8LEUO3jwl8187bJU0/edit?usp=sharing.
Tomorrow's chance stands at 75.4%. Good luck!

Here is an interesting plot, showing various probabilities. I think the maths is correct.

Yellow boxes: the probability that you will be a winner either today or in the future (if you have not won so far) = number of prizes left in total / number of people left

Green crosses: the probability that you will win today (if you have not won so far) = number of prizes today / number of people left

Purple pluses: the probability that you will win on this specific day = probability that you have lost on all previous days x prob you will win today

Blue stars: the probability that you will still be a loser after this day (if you have not won so far) = probability that you have lost on all previous days x prob you will lose today

 

It is interesting that the probability of winning on a specific day in the future is uniform - so, for example, today the probability of winning on the 10th is the same as the probability of winning on 24th.

And while the probability of being a winner today or in the future goes down, the probability of being a winner today goes up!

It shows how careful you have to be with language when discussing probabliities. The probability of winning goes up, down and stays the same as the event progresses, depending on exactly how you define the problem.