Creating a Random Lottery

[Brian Hanlin]

I have been tossing around the idea of how to use Excel to simulate a
lottery drum for picking prizes. I have to pick out random drawings monthy
for prizes and have been placing tickets with names into a fish bowl. I have
to say this is very anoying and time consuming.

The basics would be to have a list of names, and how many tickets or entries
each name has in the draw. Of course a person with one ticket should stillbe
able to win, but those with more tickets just get a better chance. Idealy, a
form where I can enter a name and the number of tickets then a "Draw" button
that would provide the winner's name would be my goal.

Ideas??

[Dave Peterson]

One common suggestion is to use one cell per ticket--if a person buys 10
tickets, then they get 10 cells.

Put this info in a column (say column A).

Then put
=rand()
in B2 (headers in row 1)
and drag down as many rows as you have data

Then select columns A:B and sort by column B.

You can choose the winner from the one that sorts to the top.

Brian Hanlin wrote:
>
> I have been tossing around the idea of how to use Excel to simulate a
> lottery drum for picking prizes. I have to pick out random drawings monthy
> for prizes and have been placing tickets with names into a fish bowl. I have
> to say this is very anoying and time consuming.
>
> The basics would be to have a list of names, and how many tickets or entries
> each name has in the draw. Of course a person with one ticket should stillbe
> able to win, but those with more tickets just get a better chance. Idealy, a
> form where I can enter a name and the number of tickets then a "Draw" button
> that would provide the winner's name would be my goal.
>
> Ideas??

--

Dave Peterson

[Brian Hanlin]

OK, so I glanced ay your reply quickly on my way to work... and dang if I
didn't get the idea under my skin and got the project done in half a day.
Thanks very much for the idea. I'm sure that once I look at it later I'll
see ways to improve it, like turning off Auto Calculation while filling in
the names.

"Dave Peterson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> One common suggestion is to use one cell per ticket--if a person buys 10
> tickets, then they get 10 cells.
>
> Put this info in a column (say column A).
>
> Then put
> =rand()
> in B2 (headers in row 1)
> and drag down as many rows as you have data
>
> Then select columns A:B and sort by column B.
>
> You can choose the winner from the one that sorts to the top.
>
> Brian Hanlin wrote:
>>
>> I have been tossing around the idea of how to use Excel to simulate a
>> lottery drum for picking prizes. I have to pick out random drawings
>> monthy
>> for prizes and have been placing tickets with names into a fish bowl. I
>> have
>> to say this is very anoying and time consuming.
>>
>> The basics would be to have a list of names, and how many tickets or
>> entries
>> each name has in the draw. Of course a person with one ticket should
>> stillbe
>> able to win, but those with more tickets just get a better chance.
>> Idealy, a
>> form where I can enter a name and the number of tickets then a "Draw"
>> button
>> that would provide the winner's name would be my goal.
>>
>> Ideas??
>
> --
>
> Dave Peterson