4 ms·

I tried applying the wisdom of crowds idea instead :D https://twitter.com/SmittyW62858649/status/1358926582513995777 https://twitter.com/SmittyW62858649/status/

I tried applying the wisdom of crowds idea instead :D https://twitter.com/SmittyW62858649/status/1358926582513995777 https://twitter.com/SmittyW62858649/status/13589265825139957... Not sure if taking a median is the best idea. I figure a gamma distribution might work better!

yeldarb 6y ago
Were there any gaps in the guesses? You have to be first to guess the correct answer so taking an un-picked lottery number in the vicinity of the median would be a decent strategy.
- TooKool4This 6y ago
  Yep looks like there are but are in the higher range of the distribution (>300). Updated the post with some interesting plots. I would really like to use a z-score metric to remove the outliers and fit a gamma distribution, but unfortunately its a busy Monday!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
joshvm 6y ago
I tried this a few years ago with a jar-of-coins problem on Twitter. I think it was Orange in the UK, the winner won the value of a tube full of pennies? You were allowed X guesses per day, per account (so I roped a few friends in). Since the guesses were public, it seemed like a good opportunity to try the theory out. The closest guess would win. The strategy was pretty simple: use your guesses to bracket other people's answers. So if someone guesssed £100, you would guess £99.99 and £100.01. Of course someone might guess exactly, but I don't think that happened (or maybe it did?). I wrote a script (I think in PHP of all things) to poll the hashtag and put all the entries into a database, with some code to figure out what ranges we needed to cover each day. There may also have been some heuristics to account for the fact that you couldn't possibly cover everyone's guesses, but you could try to maximise the range of values that you would win for. I think we also tried to weight the suggested guesses around the median value. In the end it didn't win, but it was a fun exercise. I think the winning answer was very close to the median.
- TooKool4This 6y ago
  That’s pretty cool! I’m going along in the same vein. I know my median guess was taken first so I can’t actually win but I just wanted to see how close I could get out of curiosity. I am surprised the median was an accurate estimator in your case but I suppose it makes sense if you are not close to the bound of zero (I.e. it start approximating a normal distribution)

yeldarb 6y ago

Were there any gaps in the guesses? You have to be first to guess the correct answer so taking an un-picked lottery number in the vicinity of the median would be a decent strategy.

TooKool4This 6y ago
Yep looks like there are but are in the higher range of the distribution (>300). Updated the post with some interesting plots. I would really like to use a z-score metric to remove the outliers and fit a gamma distribution, but unfortunately its a busy Monday!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

joshvm 6y ago

I tried this a few years ago with a jar-of-coins problem on Twitter. I think it was Orange in the UK, the winner won the value of a tube full of pennies? You were allowed X guesses per day, per account (so I roped a few friends in). Since the guesses were public, it seemed like a good opportunity to try the theory out. The closest guess would win. The strategy was pretty simple: use your guesses to bracket other people's answers. So if someone guesssed £100, you would guess £99.99 and £100.01. Of course someone might guess exactly, but I don't think that happened (or maybe it did?). I wrote a script (I think in PHP of all things) to poll the hashtag and put all the entries into a database, with some code to figure out what ranges we needed to cover each day. There may also have been some heuristics to account for the fact that you couldn't possibly cover everyone's guesses, but you could try to maximise the range of values that you would win for. I think we also tried to weight the suggested guesses around the median value. In the end it didn't win, but it was a fun exercise. I think the winning answer was very close to the median.

TooKool4This 6y ago
That’s pretty cool! I’m going along in the same vein. I know my median guess was taken first so I can’t actually win but I just wanted to see how close I could get out of curiosity. I am surprised the median was an accurate estimator in your case but I suppose it makes sense if you are not close to the bound of zero (I.e. it start approximating a normal distribution)