Monte Carlo simulation for the Western States 100

See my Hardrock simulation here.

Run simulations to calculate your odds of getting into the lottery. This is the same method used by Western States themselves but with this you can run the odds before Western States officially publishes the results.

Note that there could be differences between these results and what Western States publishes. It depends on how many simulation runs you do, but also it depends on if the total number of selections changes and whether the preliminary ticket numbers end up changing.

Running simulations

You can run simulations by invoking main.rb and it'll prompt you for how many simulations to run and whether to include the chance of landing on the waitlist in the odds. Western States includes the waitlist in the odds that they calculate. Then it will output the average number of people selected per category as well as the odds for each category.

ruby main.rb

You could also start up irb and run it that way:

load 'monte_carlo.rb'
mc = MonteCarlo.new(<num-of-simulations>, <include-waitlist-boolean>)
mc.run_simulations
mc.calculate_odds

Entrants

Entrant counts are hardcoded in JSON files in the years folder, so make sure those are updated before running simulations.