In: Operations Management
There are three horses in a race. Historical records show that the time it takes each horse to complete a similar race is Normally distributed with a mean and standard distribution given in
the table below (all numbers are in minutes). Simulate 1,000 races using Excel. Approximately what proportion of the time will each horse win?
Horse | Mean | Standard Dev. |
1 | 0.87 | 0.17 |
2 | 0.95 | 0.06 |
3 | 1.10 | 0.14 |
Make sure you explain in your write up what each column of your spreadsheet stands for and how you obtained each column from the other data.
Spreadsheet model for simulation is following
Formula:
B9 =NORMINV(RAND(),B$3,B$4) copy to B9:D1008
E9 =MATCH(MIN(B9:D9),B9:D9,0) copy to E9:E1008
H8 =COUNTIF($E$9:$E$1008,1)/1000 copy to H10, H12
Simulation results:
Proportion of time Horse 1 wins = 0.683
Proportion of time Horse 2 wins = 0.262
Proportion of time Horse 3 wins = 0.055
(note that the above results will vary for every simulation run)