Creating a percentage of marked objects from a bag help

Question

Hey guys, i've had good feedback and help from these forums before so thought i'd pick your brains again...
I'm looking at making a sim/game based around random results.
The experiment im supporting has (for example) 100 rubber ducks in a bag, you pick out 30 and mark them with a cross and place them back in the bag. Then you pick another 30 and note how many of the marked ducks you have found again.
I have some knowledge of Flash and have managed to make a random dice simulator and a few others.
I figure the best way is to forget about manually marking the ducks but instead have a drop down box where you can sellect how many of the 100 will be marked.Then have an action button which produces the results (in numbers?) underneath each corresponding duck (1 normal yellow, one marked).
Anybody able to help?
Thanks very much!!
Ollie

Answer 1

Yes, it makes sense, and the simulation I gave you does that and a bit more.  It actually let's you pick ducks more than just twice.
I do want to make sure I understand the concept clearly, so I'll write things in "my words" just to be clear.
When you say you wish to simulate the picking the ducks, you mean that when the user clicks the bag, the computer will pick the ducks randomly for him, the user will not actually see 100 ducks and start picking each one.  Correct?
If the answer to that is YES, then the button that says "Draw", that's your bag.
Now I separated the part that does the reporting, from the part that does the drawing to let it be more flexible and so that you could slice it better to suit your needs.
My simulation does pick random ducks every time.  Basically what it does, takes 30 ducks out of the bag, marks them and puts them back it.  You click again and it picks 30 ducks out of the bag, marks them, and puts them back in.  So a duck can have more than one x.  Technically speaking, those are very special rubber ducks because they can have 2,147,483,648 'X's on them.
Let's look at the code that actually does this in more detail
function drawFromBucket(event:MouseEvent):void      // could be called drawFromBag
    var ducksPickedList:Array = new Array();       // this is how I keep track of which ducks have been taken OUT of the bag in each draw
    var amountOfDucksToPick:int = 30;               // How many ducks to take out, easily changed to suit your needs
    howManyDraws++;                                      // Keeping count of how many times have we taken ducks out of the bag
                              // Here is where we pick the ducks  This is a loop that will go 30 times or how many you choose above
    for (var index:int = 0; index < amountOfDucksToPick; index++)
         // Pick a duck at random and check to see if we already picked it
         // if we did, pick another.
         var luckyDuckIndex:int;
         do
              luckyDuckIndex  = Math.random() * howManyDucks;     // Pick a duck by it's number
          } while (ducksPickedList.indexOf(luckyDuckIndex) >= 0);  // Check to see if it's out of the bag, if it is out already pick anotherone.
          trace("Lucks duck #" + luckyDuckIndex.toString());   // So you can see in your Console which ducks have been picked.
                                                                // put it in the list that stores the ducks that out of the bag.  This gets reset on every draw from the bag
         ducksPickedList.push(luckyDuckIndex);
        //  Mark that duck
        var luckyDuck:Object = bunchOfDucks[luckyDuckIndex];     // We just had a number this is how we grab the duck that belongs to that number
        luckyDuck.timesSelected++;                                           // We write an X on that duck.
  The reporting function basically tells you how many ducks are there than have more than x amount of 'X's on them, although interesting, not exactly what you needed.  What you need is not that complicated to get, there is multiple ways of doing this, but I'll just edit the function above.
I got rid of the button that showed the results, and just show the results on each draw.
Here is the final code:
stop();
var bunchOfDucks:Array = new Array();
var howManyDucks:int = 100;
var howManyDraws:int = 0;
drawDucksButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,drawFromBucket);
// Create the ducks
for (var duckIndex:int=0; duckIndex < howManyDucks; duckIndex++)
    var oneDuck:Object = new Object();
    oneDuck.timesSelected = 0;
    bunchOfDucks.push(oneDuck);
function drawFromBucket(event:MouseEvent):void
    var ducksPickedList:Array = new Array();
    var amountOfDucksToPick:int = 30;
    var amountOfFirstTimePicks:int = 0;
    var amountThatHaveAtLeastOneX:int = 0;
    howManyDraws++;
    for (var index:int = 0; index < amountOfDucksToPick; index++)
         // Pick a duck at random and check to see if we already picked it
         // if we did, pick another.
         var luckyDuckIndex:int;
         do
              luckyDuckIndex  = Math.random() * howManyDucks;
          } while (ducksPickedList.indexOf(luckyDuckIndex) >= 0);
          trace("Lucks duck #" + luckyDuckIndex.toString());
         // put it in the list
         ducksPickedList.push(luckyDuckIndex);
        //  Find the duck that belongs to the number pulled
        var luckyDuck:Object = bunchOfDucks[luckyDuckIndex];
        // We check to see if the duck had a X previously and
        // count accordingly
        if (luckyDuck.timesSelected == 0)
            amountOfFirstTimePicks++;
        else
            amountThatHaveAtLeastOneX++;
            // Write an X on that duck.
        luckyDuck.timesSelected++;            
     showResultsBox.labelNotMarkedBefore.text = amountOfFirstTimePicks.toString();
     showResultsBox.labelHasPreviousX.text = amountThatHaveAtLeastOneX.toString();
     showResultsBox.labelAmountOfDraws.text = howManyDraws.toString();
     getStats();
// Find out how many ducks where picked more than the amount
// specified in the moreThanAmount parameter
function howManyDucksPickedMoreThan(moreThanAmount:int):int
    var count:int = 0;
    for (var duckIndex:int=0; duckIndex < howManyDucks; duckIndex++)
        var oneDuck:Object = bunchOfDucks[duckIndex];
        if ( oneDuck.timesSelected > moreThanAmount)
            count++;
    return count;
function getStats():void
    var pickAmount = 2;
    var resultAmount:int = howManyDucksPickedMoreThan(pickAmount);
    showResultsBox.resultText.text = "There were " +resultAmount.toString() + " ducks picked more than " + pickAmount.toString() + " times in a total of " + howManyDraws.toString() + " draws.";    
Here is the screenshot.  Do not pay to much attention to my ducks. 
What you could use is a reset button that sets everything back to 0 to start over again, also you could easily let the user choose the amount of ducks to pick from the bag, and to select the value that they want to use for the report,  Would probably need that report button again if you choose to add that.  I'll leave those to you.
-Art