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This reminds me of a question asked in a Game Theory class server years ago: Pick a number Whoever's number is closest to one half the average of all submitted
by sente 14y ago
This reminds me of a question asked in a Game Theory class server years ago:
Pick a number
Whoever's number is closest to one half the average of all submitted numbers wins!
I just whipped together a tiny wsgi app for this:
http://sente.cc/wsgi/number_poll/ http://sente.cc/wsgi/number_poll/
- thaumasiotes 14y agoHow could the strategy here be anything other than "pick 0"? Even the other degenerate strategy of "pick something which is like negative infinity" is a guaranteed loser, and it's only interesting if you assume everyone else will pick positive numbers (which your web app specifies, though your problem statement doesn't).
- sente 14y agoI had 10 minutes to create the poll before the library closed...I definitely could have done a better job describing the problem, you're right. Each person was told to pick a number between 0 and 100 The number I would pick would be dependent on who else is taking the poll, how much credit do you give them, etc I'm in my phone now with a low battery, otherwise I'd type
- pavel_lishin 14y agoThe Wikipedia entry mentions this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average But one of the problems with selecting a strategy is assuming that everyone will act perfectly rationally. This is hardly ever the case.
- comex 14y agoContext: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average
- sente 14y agoResults are at http://sente.cc/wsgi/number_poll/results http://sente.cc/wsgi/number_poll/results
- sente 14y agoactually -- 'better' results are here -- http://sente.cc/wsgi/number_poll/results_unique http://sente.cc/wsgi/number_poll/results_unique (the other link doesn't restrict each IP to only 1 vote)