We toted this big ol’ barrel of rings to The DIY Trunk Show this weekend to ask you to guess how many rings were in the jar.  We had guesses from 1,000 all the way to 1,999,999,999 with the average being 213,408.  Nearly 100 folks submitted their guess in the hopes of being the closest to the real number and winning a $25 Blue Buddha gift certificate but only one had the closest guess.

The grand total of rings in the jar was *drumroll*…

87,843

The winning guess of 86,000 belonged to Andy I.  Congratulations Andy, good eye!  Congrats also to runners up Lauren C. and Mira, Petrea & Alexa B.

We also posted this picture on our page on Facebook just for fun to see if any of our fans could guess the total.  We have to give props to Jen M., Ray T., and Cathy M. for making the three closest guesses!  You guys really know how to virtually eyeball jump ring quantities!

Miss the show?  Check out a few pics on our page on Facebook:

contest · DIY Trunk Show · jump rings · just for fun

Every year at the DIY Trunk Show, we have a Guess How Many Rings contest at the Blue Buddha booth. It’s always a ton of fun for me to see what people’s perceptions of quantity are. It is clear that people tend to overestimate…often by a lot.

You can see the target jar way to the right of our display:

For those wishing to play at home before you read the answer…these rings are size P16, and yes, there is a layer of black rings at the top, the same height as the other colors.

This year, we had two winners! One guy I remember, because he came up and very carefully studied the rings, and took a good couple of minutes to do some calculations based on the volume of the container. Very detailed! I am not sure what method the other person used, but the end result was the same. So congratulations to Paul K. and Maria S. – your guesses of 12,000 rings were closest to the actual number of 11,100 and you each win a gift certificate worth $25.

And now for the usual mathy geekiness surrounding the guesses (I have too much fun with numbers, sometimes):
Range: 742 – 800,000
Mean (average): 34,044
Mean w/o 2 highest and 2 lowest: 5,913
Median: 4,764
Mode (most popular guesses): 12,000
I find it interesting that the Mode was also the winning number!
Runners up: 10,133 (off by 967), 70,000 (off by 1,200)
Most people underestimated – of all the guesses,80 % were less than the total.

chainmaille · Chicago Craft Mafia · contest · craft fair · DIY Trunk Show · jewelry show · jump rings

We’ve added some photos of the DIY Trunk Show and the One of a Kind Show to the shows archive and also to the Blue Buddha Page on Facebook. Congratulations to the winner of the annual “Guess How Many Rings?” contest at the DIY show!

We are busier than ever with orders and have even roped in a part-time seasonal worker to help us get through the holidays. So if we’re quieter than normal on Twitter and Facebook, it’s only ’cause we’re busy bagging and packing orders.

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