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Blogger Tip: Cool Tool for Random Drawings
By JLP | November 3, 2006
Believe it or not, the first time I hosted a random drawing for a prize, I actually wrote numbers on little slips of paper and had one of my kids draw a number out of a cup. Then Jonathan from MyMoneyBlog (at least I think that’s who it was) told me that he used some sort of random number generator. So, I found a site called Random.org and started using it. It makes the job MUCH easier.
It is pretty straight forward how to use it but for those of you who would still like some instruction, it works like this:
1. Go to Random.org and find the middle section that looks like this:
2. Click on the link that I have highlighted above that says “random integers,” which will take you to a page that looks like this:
I entered the following numbers I needed for the drawing:
- 2 for the number of winners
- 1 for the smallest value
- 46 for the largest value since that is the number of entries in the contest
The last number doesn’t really matter for this example so I simply left it at 5.
3. Then, you simply click on “Get Numbers” and it will take you to a new page with your randomly selected numbers! Pretty cool, eh? I think so. It’s amazing how something so simple can excite a blogger!
Topics: Blogging | 3 Comments »
November 3rd, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Just list your entries in excel and the then use the RAND() and INT() functions!
eg. To pick a random number between 1 and 46 you use:
=INT(RAND()*46)+1
You can press F9 to manually pick another random number, or just replicate the formula into as many cells as you want numbers.
Regards
http://enoughwealth.blogspot.com
November 4th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Thanks for the tip. I never even considered using Excel. However, I think it just as easy to use Random.org.
November 9th, 2006 at 9:31 am
I used to split photons with my particle accelerator and count the random radioactive isotopes, but this method seems a little simpler.