Posted by Danny Dover

Disclaimer: This post doesn’t include any information about SEO. If you are looking for SEO related content, please read the normal search related posts on this blog.


Danny Dover and Timmy Christensen (Our User Interface Expert) prepare for the game

Monday morning SEOmoz sent an e-mail to all PRO members asking them if they would be willing to beta test our awesomely big and useful tool. I only had enough resources to run the test with 300 people so I tried to come up with a solution to narrow down the list that was both fun and fair. If the e-mail recipients were interested, they were asked to fill out a form with their name, SEOmoz account e-mail, website and their choice of either rock, paper or scissors (RPS). We had about 1000 people fill out the form (Thank You!) and I ran the data through a nifty simulator I hacked together.

The entries were interestingly unequal:

Rock Paper Scissors Original Entires

To run the simulator, I put all the entries in a spreadsheet and sorted them by weapon of choice.  I then removed anyone who either did not include a weapon or chose a non-applicable item (Atomic Bomb, Shark with Laser, Dynamite, Sushi, Rand, etc..) Next, I randomized the list, cut it in half and faced everyone against another player.

Spreadsheet

I then abused the formula line by adding the rules of game.

=IF(AND(C2="Paper",G2="Paper"), "Tie",
    IF(AND(C2="Rock",G2="Rock"), "Tie",
        IF(AND(C2="Scissors",G2="Scissors"), "Tie",
            IF(AND(C2="Paper",G2="Rock"), "Left",
                IF(AND(C2="Scissors",G2="Paper"), "Left",
                    IF(AND(C2="Rock",G2="Scissors"), "Left",
                        IF(AND(C2="Rock",G2="Paper"), "Right",
                            IF(AND(C2="Paper",G2="Scissors"), "Right",
                                IF(AND(C2="Scissors",G2="Rock"), "Right", "WTF?"
                                    )))))))))

(Left and Right indicate which side of the spreadsheet the winner was on.)

Afterward, I removed the losers, rerandomized the list, cut it in half and lined up every player with an opponent. It took 4 rounds.

There was a clear winner.

The winners will be alerted via e-mail in the coming days. Thanks to everyone who played!

P.S. Sometimes, I do actual work here at the moz. I have a ‘real’ post coming out later this week. ;-)

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Continue Reading: Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Results of the Beta Tester Contest

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