News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Gym Genie : An app to tell if the gym is free by dalke on Saturday April 05, 2014 @07:09PM (#7538832)
That's the El Farol Bar problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_Bar_problem ). As an aside, I've been to El Farol - it's indeed small.

If everyone uses the same strategy, then as you say there's no solution. Instead, use a mixed strategy. Not everyone will have this app, and some people's times are more fixed than others, so there will be a mixed strategy at the beginning.

If it gets to be really bad, and everyone uses the same app, then the app might add some artificial biases to smooth things out, or select from a set of user-specified preferences.

Re:Gym Genie : An app to tell if the gym is free by mkal_tsr on Saturday April 05, 2014 @08:05PM (#7538991)
Oh wow, I never knew that had a name, thank you for the link!
Re:Gym Genie : An app to tell if the gym is free by dalke on Saturday April 05, 2014 @08:48PM (#7539118)
You're welcome. And I'm excited because it's the first time since I learned about it 10 years ago that I got to use that tidbit of knowledge.