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Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out

sjsu.edu

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Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out

#71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> doesn't matter how many players there are. suppose there's one ice cream guy. where is he going to put his ice cream hut? in the center. let's say another one shows up. where is he going to put his hut? in the center. the logic repeats. No it doesn't. With three sellers in the center, the one in the middle is close to very little people. He's in the worst possible spot and he'd better move anywhere else. So that'…

By the time you have walked half way along the beach to the icecream stalls, the distance between them will be negligible. If I walk up to three icecream stalls, I'll be right infront of three icecream stalls, so location won't matter. I'm not sure how this aspect applies to the political senario, which is the more interesting one.

In politics what it usually means that while there can be advantages for two parties to tend towards the political centre, they always tend to keep enough distance between themselves to be clearly differentiated. The same logic still applies more or less - although the further towards the extremes the parties get, the larger the gap between them will tend to have to be.

Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out

#72
post #44
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

In TPIR, people have to try and guess the price of an item, and whoever comes closest without going over wins. So if I bid after another player, I can bid one dollar more than him, effectively stealing his bid (unless he happened to guess exactly right). People do this quite frequently; it's not uncommon to see the fourth and final bidder bid one dollar higher than the highest of the three other bids.

Of course this works at the top and bottom - so you should also bid one dollar lower than the lowest if you think it is lower than everyone thought. This is all only true if you are bidding last, any time before that you should be honest* to give the later players the toughest choice of going higher or lower than you.

If you go last and think it is between two other bids you chose 1 higher than the lower bid (because of the too high bids being ignored).

*I think in fact because of the high bids rule there is always an incentive to shave your bid to err on the low side, but it is difficult to quantify what size this effect is.

Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out

#73
post #72
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In TPIR, people have to try and guess the price of an item, and whoever comes closest without going over wins. So if I bid after another player, I can bid one dollar more than him, effectively stealing his bid (unless he happened to guess exactly right). People do this quite frequently; it's not uncommon to see the fourth and final bidder bid one dollar higher than the highest of the three other bids.

Of course this works at the top and bottom - so you should also bid one dollar lower than the lowest if you think it is lower than everyone thought. This is all only true if you are bidding last, any time before that you should be honest* to give the later players the toughest choice of going higher or lower than you. If you go last and think it is between two other bids you chose 1 higher than the lower bid (because…

Actually, if you think everyone's bid was too high, you bid $1, since the goal is to get as close as possible without going over. Like blackjack.
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