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Hello, World

m.whitehouse.gov

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Re: Hello, World

#81

Post by learnstats2 »

sgreben wrote: post #80
furyofantares wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience arriving at this solution made me a bit curious as to how others solved it. Was there reasoning involved before you arrived at a strategy and verified it, or did the strategy just come to you? Did you try multiple strategies, and if so, was there a method to generating/iterating on them, or were they just coming to you and you tried them?

Purely mechanically. Just writing down the problem statement we get: \exists f,g: \forall a,b: (f(b)=a) | (g(a)=b) where f,g are the guesses and a,b are the flips. Each guess is a function of the information available to the respective player -- the outcome of his own coin flip. There's only 4 unary boolean functions: f,g \in {true,false,id,not} The constant functions are out and order doesn't matter, so we're left w…

I followed almost exactly the same logic as sgreben, but without the notation.

First, I assume there is an answer, and at least a moderately interesting answer.

There is no way they can communicate information post-flip, therefore they must be able to cover every possible option.

They cannot cover every possible option by deciding what to write in advance, therefore they must decide what to write based on the flip. In fact, they must both decide based on the flip or they will not gain anything.

If you decide what to write based on the flip, there are only two real choices per player: write the same as what you got, or write the other one.

That leaves you with 3 overall options. Both taking the same of these choices won't work (I skipped over the calculation because they're not interesting solutions), so they must agree to take opposite choices.

Re: Hello, World

#83

Post by tempodox »

... Obama [...] became the first president to write a line of code ...

Wasn't the Dictator of Singapore earlier with his Sudoku?

This is a ridiculous stunt, and it sets the wrong accents. Coding is being hyped while the people who actually keep us alive and in good condition work 3 jobs and can't afford health insurance.

Meantime, Obama destroys the Constitution and betrays the People of the U.S. to the NSA and their ilk like none did before. I think I'm getting sick.

Re: Hello, World

#84

Post by tgb »

furyofantares wrote: post #5
SMackinnon wrote: post #3

Spoiler: 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

My experience arriving at this solution made me a bit curious as to how others solved it. Was there reasoning involved before you arrived at a strategy and verified it, or did the strategy just come to you? Did you try multiple strategies, and if so, was there a method to generating/iterating on them, or were they just coming to you and you tried them?

I wrote out the 4 possible coin flips and expected to try to work it out more or less by brute force but once I looked at the possibilities the answer came to me and seemed obviously correct at once. Brains are weird. Just because I am one doesn't mean I have the faintest clue why or how it does things.

Re: Hello, World

#85

Post by eru »

tempodox wrote: post #83

... Obama [...] became the first president to write a line of code ... Wasn't the Dictator of Singapore earlier with his Sudoku? This is a ridiculous stunt, and it sets the wrong accents. Coding is being hyped while the people who actually keep us alive and in good condition work 3 jobs and can't afford health insurance. Meantime, Obama destroys the Constitution and betrays the People of the U.S. to the NSA and their…

You mean the PM of Singapore? Anyway, they are obviously referring to POTUS's only. (You can bet eg Dr Angela Merkel wrote some code in her time as well.)

Re: Hello, World

#86

Post by nartz »

furyofantares wrote: post #5
SMackinnon wrote: post #3

Spoiler: 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

My experience arriving at this solution made me a bit curious as to how others solved it. Was there reasoning involved before you arrived at a strategy and verified it, or did the strategy just come to you? Did you try multiple strategies, and if so, was there a method to generating/iterating on them, or were they just coming to you and you tried them?

Generally, it helps abstracting the problem away into the real constraints, in this case, the outcomes space, (i.e. 4 possibilities, that can be compressed into 2 bits of information bit 1 = 'same or different', bit 2 = 'head or tails', but in this case 'head or tails' is irrelevant), and then reasoning how each person communicates their bit of information to span the entire outcome space.

Re: Hello, World

#87

Post by happyscrappy »

startupfounder wrote: post #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 ques…

If Lessig's theory is correct then how in the world is pot being legalized?

Re: Hello, World

#89

Post by chinpokomon »

javert wrote: post #51
hkmurakami wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have no respect for a researcher who took rhe stand against Microsoft in the Microsoft antitrust case?

Absolutely. That makes him even worse. "Antitrust" is a bogus concept. It is never and was never in the public interest. It is also a massive violation of the rights of companies and their shareholders. Consider that if Windows/IE were really that bad, people would have just switched more readily to a Microsoft competitor. Desktop-quality Linux would have come about/come about sooner, or something equivalent. This is…

I agree with you, but perhaps for a slightly different reason. I worked for Microsoft in 2001 and 2003, and recently rejoined the company. I have had enough time away from Microsoft that I feel safe in saying that I have perspective both from the inside and from the outside.

The biggest drawback that I saw from the DOJ decision was that Microsoft was not allowed to innovate. Windows 98 and Active Desktop can be considered an early precursor to today's web applications like Chrome packaged apps and Firefox apps. How might the application landscape look today if XP were firmly rooted in the concept of web applications rather than native applications? The decision against Microsoft actually slowed them down and allowed them to slowly outlast their competitors.

Instead of fighting a browser war, Netscape might have pivoted and created a Chrome OS like operating system that ran on top of Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. Google might have become known for creating a rich set of web-centric APIs that Netscape OS leveraged.

Instead, Netscape got stuck in an entrenched losing battle over a product. It was myopia that defeated them. The DOJ decision delayed the inevitable and it caused Netscape to waste resources thinking they had a chance in a "fair" fight. The Web 2.0 revolution was poised to take place on the desktop rather than in the browser. As a result, I think we all have suffered a 15 year setback.

I feel in the same way that an EU decision against Google won't correct any injustices, but it might stifle innovation; and not just innovation from Google, but its competitors as well.

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