Hello, World
11–20 of 121 posts
Re: Hello, World
#12> The puzzle is this: Can you think of a strategy Alice and Bob can use that is guaranteed to win every time?
Raise campaign finance from the wealthy so that they can make it past the lesterland election[0].
Now that you have a war chest and are in the general election you just need to raise more capital from the 0.1%, buy more advertising, hire the best staff in Washington and bam!
I know this is not the coding question at hand, but a more important question on how unequal our political system is and I couldn't forgo the opportunity to ever so gently show the obvious reality - once you past the lesterland wealthy elite and get their backing, winning is only a matter of time.
Re: Hello, World
#13Some discrete mathematicians are interested in this sort of problem, which they call "simultaneous hat guessing". There are quite a few papers, in case anyone is interested and unfamiliar with this sort of thing.
Another fun problem, probably better known, is sequential hat guessing: take 100 people in a line, arranged so that each person can see everyone in front of them, but no-one can see any of the people behind them. Everyone is given either a red or black hat to wear, but no one can see the color of their own hat, or the hat of anyone behind them. So the person at the back of the line can see everyone's hat but their own, the next person can see everyone's hat except the first person and their own, etc.
Now starting with the back of the line, each person is asked to publicly guess the color of their hat. The participants are allowed to agree upon a strategy, how many people can they guarantee guess correctly?
Things get crazy if you allow an infinite countable line of people, and put ear-muffs on anyone so that no one gets to hear anyone else's guess. Surprisingly, you can still save almost everyone (if you allow the axiom of choice).
Re: Hello, World
#14Spoiler: Bob always chooses the same as his flip, Alice always chooses the opposite of her flip. B A H H - Bob chooses heads, Win H T - Alice chooses heads, Win T H - Alice chooses tails, Win T T - Bob chooses tails, Win
Yep, its a nice problem. Reformulating it such that there are two possibilites (the coins are either different or the same) rather than four (permutations of two coins) is the way to solve the problem. I was going to post a hint rather than the solution, but you beat me to the punch.
I liked showing the four possibilities and thinking about it in the way that one of them has to be responsible for winning in each case.
Re: Hello, World
#15This is off topic, but when the next president takes office, all of current whitehouse.gov content will be gone and replaced, no?
I'm guessing they will do something similar to when Obama took office: http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/
Re: Hello, World
#16fun. https://gist.github.com/pipermerriam/d1b5a24230f2f9ec4446
[deleted]
Re: Hello, World
#17Spoiler: Bob always chooses the same as his flip, Alice always chooses the opposite of her flip. B A H H - Bob chooses heads, Win H T - Alice chooses heads, Win T H - Alice chooses tails, Win T T - Bob chooses tails, Win
Another way to look at it is either they can both get the same result or they can get different results, if it's the same then Bob will be correct, if it's different then Alice will be correct
Re: Hello, World
#18Some discrete mathematicians are interested in this sort of problem, which they call "simultaneous hat guessing". There are quite a few papers, in case anyone is interested and unfamiliar with this sort of thing. Another fun problem, probably better known, is sequential hat guessing: take 100 people in a line, arranged so that each person can see everyone in front of them, but no-one can see any of the people behind…
Yes, this is a great one. Unless I'm mistaken, the best strategy has potentially one error, but all the rest would get it right, yes?
Re: Hello, World
#19fun. https://gist.github.com/pipermerriam/d1b5a24230f2f9ec4446
slightly less verbose:
Re: Hello, World
#20Some discrete mathematicians are interested in this sort of problem, which they call "simultaneous hat guessing". There are quite a few papers, in case anyone is interested and unfamiliar with this sort of thing. Another fun problem, probably better known, is sequential hat guessing: take 100 people in a line, arranged so that each person can see everyone in front of them, but no-one can see any of the people behind…
Yes, this is a great one. Unless I'm mistaken, the best strategy has potentially one error, but all the rest would get it right, yes?
that's exactly it