3 ms·
You have 31 positive payout guesses (1 $5, 2 $4, 4 $3, 8 $2 and 16 $1) leaving 69 other numbers with zero or negative payouts. You don't want to have gaps larg
by baking 2y ago
You have 31 positive payout guesses (1 $5, 2 $4, 4 $3, 8 $2 and 16 $1) leaving 69 other numbers with zero or negative payouts. You don't want to have gaps larger than three between your positive guesses, but there are 32 gaps for a total of 96 possibilities, or an excess of 27 over the numbers you need to cover.
It seems like a lot of possibilities and I think you can get away with a minimum gap size of one, but let's assume you do 5 3-gaps at 1, 25, 50, 75, and 100 and 2-gaps everywhere else. So start with 51, then 26 and 76. Then go up or down 12, then 6, then 3. If you have a gap of two you flip a coin, if a gap of three you pick the middle one.
Or if you have them write down the number and you think it has double-digits you could put your 4-gaps below 20. Start with 53 and go up or down 24, 12, 6, and 3 (unless it is below 20, then it is multiples of four.) 59 would pay you a dollar.
Your starting guess could be anywhere from 37 to 64 without paying out more than a dollar, but if you start with an extreme, then low odd numbers and high even numbers will have a negative payout. However, I think you can still randomize sufficiently starting with 38 and 63, e.g. 63-31-15-7-3-1.
- vladimirralev 2y agoOne can make the case for a perfectly rational adversary who always avoids picking paying numbers in anticipation of the opponent to exclude paying numbers successively in their guesses. When the game is played with perfectly rational characters the picker is doomed to select one specific number and thus you always make the maximum amount. There are some variations of the binary search but that can also be worked around. If they are not cheating, that is.