How did I get enrolled in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" twice ?

Many people asked me why I could be the only person who can attend the show twice. This is how I did it.

 I did it in this way. First of all, I estimated the chance of success. I made a wide guess on how many people will try to enroll into the game. According to my observation, I found that there are many people discussing the game but when I asked them whether they enroll the game. Most of them did not enroll or only made a couple of calls only.

 According to the published figure from the ATV, there were about 1,300,000 audiences per show initially. I guessed that only 1 call will be made out of every 40 audiences (just a wide guess). That's mean about 32500 entries per show. If 70 will be chosen from the pool, the chance of receiving a call is 1/465. If I made 465 calls, on average I will get a return call and I think that I may be one of the participant answer the call fast. The duration of each call is about 2 min. 465 calls translate into 930 min. If every 6 s cost 40 cents, 930 min is $3714. Then I set a budget of $5000 to make the calls. I told myself, if all $5000 doesn't work, I will give up and consider the expense as used in a summer trip.

 Luckily, I got a reply after using about $2500 dollars. And I gave them answer almost immediately. Unfortunately, I could only be the 11th. On another hand, the mother of lucky was on my side, 1 participant dropped out in the show and I take up the vacancy and finally got $60,000 in the first show.

 And in the first show, I asked the workers and the workers told me that there were about 20000 entries per show instead of 32500 entries per show I guessed.

 Then I did the estimation again, the new data told me that the average successful return rate is about 1/285. Furthermore, in order to shorten the time spent in dialing telephone and save the money, I recorded all the answers for the questions that have been asked. Finally, I found that I can use only about 1.3 min per question without listening to all the pre-recorded instruction. This translates to about $1500 per return call. As I have my arsenal refilled in the first show and the rule of the game allow frequent attempt. I decided to call again.

 As the no. of dials goes up, mathematically, it will approach the figure of $1500 per return call. Just to speeding up the dialing process, I asked the telephone company to install a second telephone line so that I can do dialing on 2 phones simultaneously. For sure, all the contact no. and ID no. are prerecorded in the one touch dial to save time of dialing.

 Finally, I made about totally 1500 calls and got 5 return calls. Out of these, I only managed to get one more chance to go to the show. If you looked at my performance in fast finger, I think you will agree that I am a fast responder.

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上次修改日期: 2007年09月17日