Do we know the smallest donation that’s eligible for the $2000 award prize or if there are any other penalties for contributing small increments? Maybe it’s worth having some people break up their donations and do a ton of small donations to try to grab some of the $2000 prizes.
If we assume that the minimum donation allowed is $1 and that we will not be maxing out the matching funds, then the opportunity cost of a person doing this strategy instead of donating during the one-to-one matching hours is $1.
I’m not confident about my math here, but...
if p(winning 2000 with one donation) * $2000 > $1, then we should try this strategy
Which means that p(winning 2000 with one donation) has to be greater than 1/2000 for it to make sense… right?
So if we think that less than 2000 donations will be made in a certain hour (including all of our donations) then we should have people sit in front of their computers for an hour and make a $1 donation every minute until the total number of donations (including ours) is about 2000?
And if we eliminate the opportunity cost by assuming that we could not just instead plop the money into the matching funds part (if they were maxed out or something) then this seems like the right choice to make anyway and we do not run up against the 1/2000 limit.
Edit: I’m wrong. Mixed up the $2000 and the $150 prizes
I’m not sure, but I don’t think we will have access to the number of people who donated for all the other charities. And I suspect that something may be wrong in the math, because that strategy of “donate every minute until 2000 donations occur total” would lead to badly overfilling that hour with donations if, say, 1800 donations were made on behalf of all the other charities.
That math looks like you are calculating the expected value of a raffle ticket randomly awarded to one donor with a value of 2000$.
But instead, the 2000$ is awarded to the charity that received the most donations in one hour. So we just have to donate more times than the second most-donated-to charity.
The opportunity cost bound, with the information that Alexi gave, is 200 donations of 10$. If it ever takes more than 200 donations to get the 2000$, more money could have been earned during the 1-1 dollar matching hour.
So I suspect a good strategy would be to pick a set of off-peak hours where few people are donating, and split up the donations during those times to secure multiple 2000$ prizes with a low(ish) number of donations. Maybe use the success or failure of X number of donations during one off-peak hour to estimate how many donations to do during the next off-peak hour?
Of course, all this assumes that the behavior of the other donors conforms to the normal human diurnal cycle. If they are sufficiently crafty, the multiple charities that have this idea and people willing to wake up at 3 AM may make those hours prohibitively expensive.
I doubt it though. Maybe the European Less Wrong readers could donate during those times so those on the west coast don’t have to wake up at terrible hours?
And does anyone want to set up a prediction market to estimate the number of donors for the second-largest charity during the 1-6 window?
EDIT: Assuming we do 100 donations of 10 dollars each per hour for those 5 hours, and no other charity can muster 100 donations per hour.… (If we can get the prize for less than 100 donations in one hour, the expected value is greater than donating during the 2-1 matching hour) it should only take ~$5000 earmarked for that time period to get 5 2000 dollar prizes. That looks doable.
That math looks like you are calculating the expected value of a raffle ticket randomly awarded to one donor with a value of 2000$.
But instead, the 2000$ is awarded to the charity that received the most donations in one hour. So we just have to donate more times than the second most-donated-to charity.
Oh, I must have misread it. I thought it was essentially a raffle.
I mixed it up with this part:
$150 added to a random donation each hour, every hour for 24 hours.
Do we know the smallest donation that’s eligible for the $2000 award prize or if there are any other penalties for contributing small increments? Maybe it’s worth having some people break up their donations and do a ton of small donations to try to grab some of the $2000 prizes.
If we assume that the minimum donation allowed is $1 and that we will not be maxing out the matching funds, then the opportunity cost of a person doing this strategy instead of donating during the one-to-one matching hours is $1.
I’m not confident about my math here, but...
if p(winning 2000 with one donation) * $2000 > $1, then we should try this strategy Which means that p(winning 2000 with one donation) has to be greater than 1/2000 for it to make sense… right?
So if we think that less than 2000 donations will be made in a certain hour (including all of our donations) then we should have people sit in front of their computers for an hour and make a $1 donation every minute until the total number of donations (including ours) is about 2000?
And if we eliminate the opportunity cost by assuming that we could not just instead plop the money into the matching funds part (if they were maxed out or something) then this seems like the right choice to make anyway and we do not run up against the 1/2000 limit.
Edit: I’m wrong. Mixed up the $2000 and the $150 prizes
I’m not sure, but I don’t think we will have access to the number of people who donated for all the other charities. And I suspect that something may be wrong in the math, because that strategy of “donate every minute until 2000 donations occur total” would lead to badly overfilling that hour with donations if, say, 1800 donations were made on behalf of all the other charities.
That math looks like you are calculating the expected value of a raffle ticket randomly awarded to one donor with a value of 2000$.
But instead, the 2000$ is awarded to the charity that received the most donations in one hour. So we just have to donate more times than the second most-donated-to charity.
The opportunity cost bound, with the information that Alexi gave, is 200 donations of 10$. If it ever takes more than 200 donations to get the 2000$, more money could have been earned during the 1-1 dollar matching hour.
So I suspect a good strategy would be to pick a set of off-peak hours where few people are donating, and split up the donations during those times to secure multiple 2000$ prizes with a low(ish) number of donations. Maybe use the success or failure of X number of donations during one off-peak hour to estimate how many donations to do during the next off-peak hour?
Of course, all this assumes that the behavior of the other donors conforms to the normal human diurnal cycle. If they are sufficiently crafty, the multiple charities that have this idea and people willing to wake up at 3 AM may make those hours prohibitively expensive.
I doubt it though. Maybe the European Less Wrong readers could donate during those times so those on the west coast don’t have to wake up at terrible hours?
And does anyone want to set up a prediction market to estimate the number of donors for the second-largest charity during the 1-6 window?
EDIT: Assuming we do 100 donations of 10 dollars each per hour for those 5 hours, and no other charity can muster 100 donations per hour.… (If we can get the prize for less than 100 donations in one hour, the expected value is greater than donating during the 2-1 matching hour) it should only take ~$5000 earmarked for that time period to get 5 2000 dollar prizes. That looks doable.
Oh, I must have misread it. I thought it was essentially a raffle.
I mixed it up with this part:
Minimum donation is $10.