From the "Adam Smith, Esq." Readers’ Survey—and its $200 AMEX gift check, promised to one lucky winner—we now have news: We have a winner!
But first, to all readers who took the survey: Many thanks! I truly appreciate your taking the time to participate, and, as I said, the first and foremost goal of the survey is to improve "Adam Smith, Esq." based on your feedback, and to make it more trenchant, useful, focused, and helpful. Again, thanks.
Before identifying our winner, a comment on methodology. About half of you who took the survey enrolled in the random drawing for the gift check. To select the winner, I totaled up the number of enrollees and multiplied that by the random number generator (a function in MS Excel, which returns a random number between 0 and 1, to a large number of decimal places), which gave me the winner’s rank in the list of enrollees.
And he is:
David Thomas, a senior associate in Wilson-Sonsini’s tax practice (specifically, employee benefits and compensation), based in Palo Alto.
I phoned Dave to let him know the good news, and he reciprocated by sharing with me, and now with you, his thoughts on winning:
“Bruce,
"Although I was happy to fill out your survey simply in appreciation for all of the useful information that I receive from Adam Smith, Esq., I am not about to turn down a prize. I just bought a new house and I am very likely going to use the gift to purchase 1) a garden fountain for my wife, and 2) a Sirius satellite radio for my car and office. On the other hand, the house I just bought was in Palo Alto, CA, so I might just use the gift check to buy groceries.
"Dave Thomas”
Thanks, Dave. And congratulations from all of us.
