Re:A Counterintuitive Probability Game
by mannykannot on Friday October 04, 2019 @06:29PM
(#21162446)
I think I misunderstood your issue here - I misread 'scheme' as an algorithm for picking splitting numbers.
> Using a random number generator on any given machine will not work as player A can always pick two numbers that are close enough to each other that there is no number on the machine in between them.
On reflection, I am not sure that the method presented in this article can guarantee > 50% in any case where the domain is discretized. Note that the original article does not say what to do if the first number revealed is equal to B's splitting number. If A always chooses adjacent numbers, there are never any 'tiebreaker' splitting numbers - i.e. those that are strictly between A's numbers, and will elicit the correct response regardless of whether B has seen the larger or the smaller of the pair.
> Using a random number generator on any given machine will not work as player A can always pick two numbers that are close enough to each other that there is no number on the machine in between them.
On reflection, I am not sure that the method presented in this article can guarantee > 50% in any case where the domain is discretized. Note that the original article does not say what to do if the first number revealed is equal to B's splitting number. If A always chooses adjacent numbers, there are never any 'tiebreaker' splitting numbers - i.e. those that are strictly between A's numbers, and will elicit the correct response regardless of whether B has seen the larger or the smaller of the pair.