From kgeiger@amgen.com Mon Oct 2 10:44:23 2000 Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 17:17:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Karl Geiger To: Gretchen Fox Subject: Re: Beer Bingo On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Gretchen Fox wrote: >Hello! I am the marketing coordinator for a St. Louis Microbrewery. We >sell Schlafly in bottles and draft in Missouri and parts of Illinois. We >are starting bar promotions this summer, and we are trying to put >together a bingo card (BEERGO) with beer terms specific to our Brewery. >Our problem is randomization. Can you help us generate about 100 or more >different cards to hand out for our game? I'd love to hear from you >soon. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. > >Gretchen Fox >The Saint Louis Brewery >Sales and Marketing Coordinator >314-241-2337 Greetings Gretchen -- If you look at the source code for that web page, you will see the page automatically regenerates itself randomly every time it loads. The current software has 105 buzzwords, 24 of which are displayed at one time (25th is "BINGO"), so there are 105!/24! possible combinations, a number larger than I care to think about. I'd be happy to contract with you, but you can do this pretty cheaply yourselves -- and have fun over a few beers with it, too. 1. Get a deck of playing cards. Write one word or phrase on each card (assumes you have 52 or fewer items). 2. Shuffle the cards. 3. Deal 25 cards into a grid. It doesn't matter what order; left to right and top to bottom works well. 4. Replace the center of the grid with the "Bingo!" card. Do this 100 times. Voila, you have 100 Bingo cards. Cheers, :Karl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Clin. Develmnt kgeiger@amgen.com Amgen Inc. Mail 17-1-C 3960 One Amgen Center Drive Tel. 805-447-3687 http://www-ucs.usc.edu/~karl Thousand Oaks CA 91320 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Opinions herein are mine alone and may/may not reflect those of Amgen.