71–80 of 166 posts
> Out of the 100 numbers, there are 32 that would require you to ask 6 questions to make a guess. Huh? I have 100 - (1+2+4+8+16+32) = 100 - 63 = 37, where 2^i numbers can be guessed after exactly i wrong guesses plus one correct guess.
Of all the things that Ballmer was wrong about... I guess this is one of them.
Steve Ballmer's net worth is 120 billion dollars, so, assuming each game takes 30 seconds, it would take you 1.6 million years to win it all.
We let our computers play. My computer's AI vs Ballmer's AI. One trillion six hundred eighty-three billion thirty-six million fifty-one thousand nine hundred eighty-four computer games in 30 seconds.
People are unable to think randomly. They'll avoid the obvious "not random" numbers 2 and 99, for example. I read somewhere that most people, asked to pick a number between 0 and 10, will pick 7. And the next digit would probably be odd, and not 5, because 5 is not random. That leaves you with 71, 73, 77 and 79. 77 is not random, so 71, 73 or 79. I'd pick 73 as my first guess.
I'd say those were good odds!
(That's why when you're picking a "random" number, it's best to use an actual dice.)
This is how you win at hammer-paper-scissors, too.
Ballmer could also change the number he's thinking of as you make guesses, so part of the game would be guessing what he's thinking.
And this, friends, is the perfect example of why the modern tech interview process is pure insanity.
Well to be fair Steve Ballmer is a terrible leader and if he had to take the tech interviews he wouldn't have passed and Microsoft wouldn't have stagnated for 10 years, before Satya Nadella took over and brought the company back on its feet.
Honestly I think Ballmer would have appreciated this answer in an interview.
I dont get this. If this is true, then he found a more efficient algorithm than binary search. Why are we not using it in CS?
As others said, if you don't expect adversary behavior in your data, it should be good enough.
This sort of misses the forest for the trees, although neat application. Ballmer's argument is essentially about tail risk. Expected value is absolutely not a good way to make bets if you value survival, because you only get one shot. Same reason you wouldn't go all in every time you get a poker hand that's "expected" to win. Because you'll (very probably) be bankrupt in a few hands. Sure the mean is +$0.07 or whatev…
This is absolutely true. All it takes is to understand that for the single person, the model isn't ergodic but all expected value based models assume ergodicity.
See [section 4 here](https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/ergodicity-economics-a-p...) on losing wealth on a positive value bet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vThljkK2nUIL...
I find it interesting: it is definitely symmetrical, but I did not expect that in the final result 1/98 could be more important as a starting value, while 2-17/82-97 are not used at all.