ABSTRACT

A soft drink company has hired you to help organize a promo­ tion for its Cool Mist soft drink by including prizes in some of the bottles. The prizes will be tokens attached to the insides of the lids of the bottles; customers determine whether they have won by scratching the lids. The soft drink company has created two types of prizes: "gold" awards and "silver" awards; the gold awards are $1 0 . 0 0 coupons for Cool Mist and the silver awards are $2.00 coupons. The company will put the prizes in 500 cases (12 bottles to a case) of soft drinks, and needs a system to decide which bottles to put the winning lids on. They plan to award 25 gold prizes and 250 silver prizes, and need a fair system for distributing them among all the bottles. On the assembly line in the bottling plant, each bottle is assigned a number. Which bottles should be designated "gold"winners, and which ones "silver" winners so the win­ ning bottles are distributed through the entire 500 cases, and will therefore be distributed around the country? You should be sure that no bottle is assigned more than one prize. To complete your job for the soft drink company, you should devise a method for awarding the gold and silver prizes such that: • 25 gold prizes and 250 silver prizes are awarded, • no bottle has more than one prize • the prizes are distributed evenly throughout the entire 500

cases. Write a brief letter to the president of the soft drink company, explaining which bottles should have the gold and silver prizes, and the method you used to designate the winning bottles.