Thursday, March 1, 2012

Pre-Weigh-In Free Rice Update

Our story in 25 words or so ....

Ronda was hungry cutting weight for the 135 lb world title fight and got to thinking about people who go hungry every day. She is also pretty obsessed with computer games.

Enter free rice ... which is a site where you answer questions and for each correct answer the company sponsoring the ad banner on the page donates 10 grains of rice to the world food hunger program.

Ronda decided to start a group to raise money, er - rice - for this program . The group is rondamma . Anyone can join and anyone can play. Here are the top ten, actually 12, people when the group hit 10,000,000 grains of rice donated and how much they had each donated as of that time. I showed the top 12 because I did not take the number exactly when the group hit 10,000,000. (I have a day job and Ronda is training so we weren't sitting around waiting for the number to turn over). To be fair, I included the people who were in the top 10 or really close.


RitchieGreaser      1,137,860
EverestRice     1,028,650
Yariv                986,600
Ryan Ghidina        910,900
Pablo Weiner        839,530
FrankMMA        525,000
Mordiaken        343,390
PhilipSellers        319,660
brooky.maunder      286,720
Etabasque         277,610
TimRiggins         261,620
spleck                 250,730


DBautista, OCanada and RobNolan were also in there but somehow their totals got dropped off.

As you can see from the chart below, the group is now at almost 18,000,000 grains of rice.



Being good at math, I figured that based on an estimated 3,500 grains of rice per bowl this was enough to feed around 5,000 people. So, Ronda's going hungry adventure will help 5,000 people not go hungry.

After a while, people who waste time on things like bar-hopping, dating, parenting, training and actual jobs questioned whether it is truly possible for someone to donate 1,000,000 grains of rice or were people cheating.

So ... I timed myself. Answering questions in Spanish or math, both of which I know pretty well, I can get 25-30 a minute correct. That is 15,000 - 18,000 per hour. Assuming other people are the same, those people who have donated a million grains of rice have spent about 55 hours on the site over the past 39 days - less than two hours a day - and fed 300 people. In addition, they have probably brushed up on their high school French or algebra.

You have about 36 more hours if you want to get in on the contest. (Of course, you can join the group any time.)  We'll send prizes to the top donors as of when Ronda weighs in on March 2nd. To give a chance to those people - graduate students, new mothers - who cannot spend a lot of time on the site, Ronda is going to also pull the names of some other donors at random. You have to have donated at least ten grains of rice. That is, answer at least one question correctly. When you play the game, if you want to be part of the contest make sure you are playing for the group rondamma. If you just want to donate rice, then that's awesome, too and good for you.

Hope that answers everyone's questions. Thank you to those in the top ten. You totally make me feel like a slacker.

If any of you are in Columbus, be sure to say, "Hi."  I will be the short grandma screaming at the top of her lungs while Ronda is fighting.


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I have been helping my boyfriend gain rice in the group under the username ecureuil3. We currently have 572250 grains gained for the group and was in 6th place as of 6pm on March 1st, but our username has completely dissapeared from the group's member list! Our total number of grains still show up as 572250 under our account name, but we are no where to be found on the group's list. I have a screenshot that I took from yesterday which shows us in the top 10.

We are participating in FreeRice because my boyfriend is a big fan of Ronda, and he is actually in China at the moment working on his Master's thesis on MMA/UFC expansion into Asia, specifically China. We decided to participate in this donate rice group because he wanted to get Ronda's attention and possibly get in touch with her to get her thoughts on the topic; so even though our name has disappeared from the group after spending hours upon hours getting to our 572250 total, if Ronda can get in touch with him, or just give him a couple minutes of her time, we'd feel much less sad about losing our top 10 status - my email is housegf@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Andrea

Anonymous said...

Hi Dr. Ann Maria,

I'm the boyfriend mentioned above. Andrea and I had a really good time helping support Ronda and earn a little rice for charity. It's great that even with such a busy schedule, you all have time to remember those less fortunate. You know who we'll be cheering for this weekend!

Best,
Alex

Dr. AnnMaria said...

Hi, Andrea -
(and boyfriend) I download a csv file fairly regularly and the last one was last night so I DO have a record of you having > 500,000 grains of rice so you are definitely in the top 10.

I'm pretty certain that Ronda is booked solid through Saturday night - she kind of has a thing on Saturday night - but I will be sure she contacts you next week

As for the free rice thing - sometimes people drop off and then show back up later. I am not sure why.

Anonymous said...

Same thing happened to me!
I was number 10 with about 480,000.
We disappeared at the same time I think.

Here's my profile: http://freerice.com/users/myballstheirmouths

Great idea by the way!

Anonymous said...

Dear myballstheirmouths,

I am embarrassed for you.

Anonymous said...

Just saw the weigh in video. The cut was a stunning success.
I just hope that tomorrow night she holds her fists closer to her face than she did during the photo op

Rowdy by armbar

Anonymous said...

And the She-male wins!!!!

Anonymous said...

Hi all,

I too had my stats disappear from freerice. I contacted @freerice on twitter but had no luck. Currently I have 756590 but ~2,000 of those were on the house (didn't know i had to click play for group when i first started). I was in 6th place when my stats disappeared and would have maintained my position through weigh-ins. My username is svtjer.

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Is the contest over? Who won? Any updates