Back to some programming.
My girlfriend often calls me NORBERT. The term is used lovingly, but it indicates to me that I am being particularly nerdy or I am caught in the act of thinking about nerdy things.
Today I am definatly norbert. A couple of nights ago I somehow got thinking about BINGO as a game. I got thinking about how the odds of winning are constantly changing with the number of balls called and the number of squares dabbed on a bingo card.
Not being particularly good at math I didn't know of a way to represent the way the odds change in a game with each ball being called. I'm sure there is a tidy little function that shows the relationship of odds at any stage in a bingo game - but I have no idea how to figure that out.
So, as a matter of curiosity (and to sharpen my PHP programming skills) I decided that I would write a BINGO simulator and track the odds as each ball is called in the game. From that I figured that I could come up with some sort of visual representation of the odds throughout a bingo game.
Why? 1) I could answer my own question about the odds changing. 2) I thought it would be a fun program to write. 3) I figured that the exercise would take me down a new path of ZEN learning.
Sure enough it did take me down a new path. PHP has a million array funtions and I am getting a chance to try a lot of them while building this particular program.
I figure that I will post the BINGO sim when its done. I will also likely mod the original program and turn it into an interactive on-line game.
Check back for my BINGO sim.
andre
Posted by andre at March 17, 2004 08:02 AM