In Reply to: Waiting for a hit, mathematically speaking posted by CMgeorger on April 19, 2004 at 3:05 PM:
1st Hit:
I entered 100 bills and waited 1.5 months.
1 hit a Day Average:
I entered 900 bills and waited 8 months.
1 hit a Day Streak:
I entered 3,367 bills and waited 19 months. To keep a constant ‘hit a day streak’, I would have to enter 350 – 400 bills per/month.
Good Luck & Happy Georgering!
Welcome
: Last week there was a question in this Forum about waiting for hits. I didn’t have time to look closely at it right then (grrrrr!), but when I did get around to looking closely at it, it set up echoes of other discussions we’ve had on this topic. This seems like a good time to bring it all up again.
: The simple answer to Gary’s question is, as several people said, that he hasn’t EMS’d enough. Everyone knows, 39 is too few bills, and two years is too long a time to spread them over, to have a reasonable chance that one of them will be hit. But then That’ll Do Pig went into a little bit more detail (and he was even kind enough to mention me – yes, where *am* I when needed?), where he started talking about specific numbers. If the sitewide hit rate is 10 percent, then on average one bill out of every 10 will get hit.
: Does this mean that we can tell someone just starting out, that they can simply EMS 10 bills, and then sit around and wait for a hit? I think that it doesn’t. For one thing, on average one bill will get hit *eventually*. The bare hit rates say nothing about how soon it will happen, and WG has some really long sleepers.
: For another thing, the one-per-ten is only an average. What if this particular group of 10 is one of the groups that doesn’t score a hit? The new person will probably think that entering those 10 bills was just a waste of time.
: And, for a third thing, the sitewide statistics may not be a good description of any individual Georger’s experience. Too much depends on individual circumstances – most importantly marking style, spending pattern, and location – and some of those individual circumstances can make a very large difference to people’s hit rates.
: In fact, it’s sort of a catch22oid (if I may coin a term) – without knowing the person’s basic hit rate we can’t say how long they might wait for a hit, but until they get a hit we can’t estimate their basic hit rate.
: So, I’m afraid I’d still go along with the old WG rule of thumb. Entering 100 bills in one month often does it.
: If you enter 100 bills in your first month and still don’t get a hit, then enter 100 more the second month. It will be unlucky if you don’t get a hit by then, but it happens.
: In fact, I’ve heard of people waiting 8 to 10 months.
: CM