Seattle Souvenir

©Tom Schelfaut 2016

Donna’s brother Scott gave me the above little trinket while we were visiting with them last weekend. It is something that the place he work at makes. It came as one big flat piece that needed to be bent in two places to form the business card card holder you see. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it as I don’t really give out business cards on a regular basis, I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll give it to somebody who could use it.

From: Bogardus, Brian [INDAUTO/ASCONUM/USAK]
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 7:29 AM
To: Fab Guys – Carlos; Keith; Rob; Ian; Tom
Subject: Seattle Souvenir

All,

I have a souvenir from Seattle, that trust me, will make you the envy of anyone who sees it, but because of the expense, I only have 1. So, I have written a number between 1 & 50 inclusive on a sticky note and placed it in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’ porch since noon yesterday. Reply to this email before noon today with your guess and the person closest to that number will win. In case of a tie, a coin flip will be used to pick the winner, the runner up will receive a somewhat less impressive item, but still be more than anyone else has.

Brian

After I had gathered all 5 co-workers guesses, the winner was obvious and I sent this out:

From: Bogardus, Brian [INDAUTO/ASCONUM/USAK]
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 11:25 AM
To: Fab Guys – Carlos; Keith; Rob; Ian; Tom
Subject: We Have A Winner

All,

No one got the number exactly and there were no ties, so there is only one winner – Tom Schelfault!

Tom guessed 30 and the actual number was:

Be sure and stop by Tom’s cubical to see his fabulous prize. And if those of you who didn’t win the grand prize would like I have enough of the runner-up prizes to go around – sticks of spearmint gum bought at the Seattle airport.

As an interesting note (at least to me it was) here are the guesses in the order in which they were received.
Carlos – 2
Keith – 5
Ian – 17
Rob – 22
Tom – 30
Those numbers correspond to the first 5 numbers in the Bernolli Sequence exactly. Take a guess what the next number would be…

Brian