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GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

Random Stranger posted:

I would be genuinely shocked if someone has not worked out optimal Guess Who strategy.

My guess is that you can't optimally solve the problem because there is no strictly dominant strategy. I can always ask a question that splits the pool not by 50% (e.g. 5% yes, 95% no) thereby taking a greater risk but potentially greater reward. The 50% strategy has probably the best worst case, but the worst best case while a higher risk strategy has a better best case but a much worse average case.

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Fast Luck
Feb 2, 1988

GaussianCopula posted:

My guess is that you can't optimally solve the problem because there is no strictly dominant strategy. I can always ask a question that splits the pool not by 50% (e.g. 5% yes, 95% no) thereby taking a greater risk but potentially greater reward. The 50% strategy has probably the best worst case, but the worst best case while a higher risk strategy has a better best case but a much worse average case.
This guy gets it.

Nexal
Apr 21, 2010

Moby - Extreme ways

Tonfa posted:

I was talking about a different reveal, not Sangmin opening the safe. The music I want kicks in when Doohee finds out his token is fake

Skrillex? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Og5ZuyC4Q

Tonfa
Apr 8, 2008

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...


I don't think that's it. 30 minute mark in the second part of the video.

EchoBase
Dec 11, 2001
S2-E6: Just caught this episode and, yeah, the ID stealing ruined the main game and then real life game play ruined the death match (Jiwon's phone call). The producers responded and said they were taking this seriously but what can they really do? They film ahead by several episodes so unless they made rules adjustments back when this happened during filming, there's not much they can do now. The games have not been very good this season and this lapse on predicting the possible strategies based on the rules is just another example of the poor design.

Anyway, so it looks like Sangmin managed to backstab 6 out of 7 opponents in one episode. That's got to be a record. And his backstabs were not subtle or as part of an alliance/friendship, they were self-serving and I think it will come back to bite him in the rear end later.

There was earlier discussion about why Sangmin used his fake immortality token on Doohee but people seemed to forget that using the token was the deal he struck in order to be named the winner and get the life token. Giving Doohee the fake immortality token was really backstabbing his own team and giving himself a guaranteed extra week.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



GaussianCopula posted:

My guess is that you can't optimally solve the problem because there is no strictly dominant strategy. I can always ask a question that splits the pool not by 50% (e.g. 5% yes, 95% no) thereby taking a greater risk but potentially greater reward. The 50% strategy has probably the best worst case, but the worst best case while a higher risk strategy has a better best case but a much worse average case.

But there can still be a strategy that maximizes your chance of winning. Optimal doesn't mean unbeatable; just that it's the strategy that leads to victory the greatest number of times; optimal Blackjack strategy, for example, wins about 52% of the time (and if you use it you get thrown out of the casino :v:). Is there a set of questions that can beat the binary division of the group regularly? Is it more efficient to try to narrow the group to eight on your first question than it is to go with a 10/9 split (you lose a bit of efficiency in the first question but possibly gain an advantage over the other other paths)?

I'm going to stop here before we break out real math and start figuring this out for ourselves.

Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jan 17, 2014

GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

Random Stranger posted:

But there can still be a strategy that maximizes your chance of winning. Optimal doesn't mean unbeatable; just that it's the strategy that leads to victory the greatest number of times; optimal Blackjack strategy, for example, wins about 52% of the time (and if you use it you get thrown out of the casino :v:). Is there a set of questions that can beat the binary division of the group regularly? Is it more efficient to try to narrow the group to eight on your first question than it is to go with a 10/9 split (you lose a bit of efficiency in the first question but possibly gain an advantage over the other other paths)?

I'm going to stop here before we break out real math and start figuring this out for ourselves.

Well the real math is pretty easy. Given that our goal is to eliminate as much people as possible with each question and both answers (yes/no) are equally desirable (e.g. you dont get another turn if the answer is yes) then we can model it as:

x is the % of people that fit the question, has to be in the intervall ]0;1[

That means that the average number of eliminated candidates can be expressed as

x*(1-x)+(1-x)*x
which is the same as 2x-2x^2 which is a parabola with a maximum at 0.5.

NowonSA
Jul 19, 2013

I am the sexiest poster in the world!

GaussianCopula posted:

Well the real math is pretty easy. Given that our goal is to eliminate as much people as possible with each question and both answers (yes/no) are equally desirable (e.g. you dont get another turn if the answer is yes) then we can model it as:

x is the % of people that fit the question, has to be in the intervall ]0;1[

That means that the average number of eliminated candidates can be expressed as

x*(1-x)+(1-x)*x
which is the same as 2x-2x^2 which is a parabola with a maximum at 0.5.

Jinho account spotted.

Tonfa posted:

I was talking about a different reveal, not Sangmin opening the safe. The music I want kicks in when Doohee finds out his token is fake

My bad there. That was totally the music I remembered playing during the latter event.

NowonSA fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jan 17, 2014

Rob Filter
Jan 19, 2009

GaussianCopula posted:

Well the real math is pretty easy. Given that our goal is to eliminate as much people as possible with each question and both answers (yes/no) are equally desirable (e.g. you dont get another turn if the answer is yes) then we can model it as:

x is the % of people that fit the question, has to be in the intervall ]0;1[

That means that the average number of eliminated candidates can be expressed as

x*(1-x)+(1-x)*x
which is the same as 2x-2x^2 which is a parabola with a maximum at 0.5.

Not exactly. Consider:

Your opponent only has one choice left. You have twenty. Which lets you win more often;

1. Narrow the field down to 10/10, and immediately lose.
2. Take a 1 in 20 guess.

Your strategy has to take into account opponent boardstate.

Fast Luck
Feb 2, 1988

Rob Filter posted:

Not exactly. Consider:

Your opponent only has one choice left. You have twenty. Which lets you win more often;

1. Narrow the field down to 10/10, and immediately lose.
2. Take a 1 in 20 guess.

Your strategy has to take into account opponent boardstate.
Right but Gaussian already recognized that in his first post but someone else was pushing for the "optimal" solution anyway. By the way that solution might be optimal for the person who gets to go first, but if the player going second also used that same technique he'd lose every time, so the person going second will have to ask the 75/25 (or 60/40 etc) questions and if they hit then switch to 50/50, while the person who went first switches to 75/25 in an attempt to catch up. Imo.

GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

Rob Filter posted:

Not exactly. Consider:

Your opponent only has one choice left. You have twenty. Which lets you win more often;

1. Narrow the field down to 10/10, and immediately lose.
2. Take a 1 in 20 guess.

Your strategy has to take into account opponent boardstate.

Thats why I stated that you would have to play an infinite number of games to make this strategy optimal. I abstracted from the boardstate by only trying to find the strategy that maximizes the expected number of eliminations.


Fast Luck posted:

Right but Gaussian already recognized that in his first post but someone else was pushing for the "optimal" solution anyway. By the way that solution might be optimal for the person who gets to go first, but if the player going second also used that same technique he'd lose every time, so the person going second will have to ask the 75/25 (or 60/40 etc) questions and if they hit then switch to 50/50, while the person who went first switches to 75/25 in an attempt to catch up. Imo.

It depends on the number of candidates. If its not a power of 2 number (4, 8, 16 etc.) there will be a point where it will depend on luck, e.g. if you have 24 candidates it would go 24-12-6-3 at which point you have a 33% chance to end it in 1, 33% to end it in 2 and 33% to need 3 guesses.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



Also, you don't have 20 options in Guess Who, you have 19. One of the characters is eliminated immediately because it's your own. That makes a 50/50 question actually reduce your initial field to either 10 or 9 remaining characters.

Putting too much thought in this, the question strategy isn't a problem because there will always be a way to formulate it so you can eliminate a group that you want. The worst case is that your question is just "Is your character one of Person A, Person B...?" So we don't have to worry about getting the results we want from the questions.

Running through the tree, it turns out that breaking the initial group of 19 into 8/11 is exactly as efficient as breaking the group into 9/10. The one advantage that 8/11 has is that if you wind up on the 8 side of the tree then you know you'll reach the end sooner. The only way to get a stronger advantage in Guess Who is to play the person rather than the game. I'd advise forming an alliance with your showbiz friends and using that.

FWIW, just guessing a name each turn will beat this strategy one quarter of the time. :v:

50 pounds of bread
Sep 27, 2006

The REAL Goobusters posted:

I didn't realize so many people hated Yooyoung and Jiwon! Haha yes they're cold at heart but so am I. I love the scheming in this show more than the games itself I guess. Seriously Yooyoung loving owns.

gently caress yooyoung, she's a bitch and the show would have been better without her. Scheming, and stealing from someone to alienate them from competition in order to eliminate them is bullshit. This was the worst episode that has ever aired, which is a pity because Sangmin's fake token would have been awesome if it wasn't tainted by Yooyoung and Jiwon's awful sportsmanship. Doohee was an awesome addition to the show, and he was eliminated by a complete non-game. Total bullshit, what a bad episode.

50 pounds of bread fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Jan 18, 2014

not joseph stalin
Dec 30, 2008
So this is truly a great show. I'm about to watch the 5:5 episode... I managed to avoid spoilers, but I did see that its apparently amazing. What I'm curious about is, what is the cultural impact of the show? Is it popular in Korea? Are people's reputations really on the line, or are they playing to a relatively small audience?

Kegslayer
Jul 23, 2007

not joseph stalin posted:

So this is truly a great show. I'm about to watch the 5:5 episode... I managed to avoid spoilers, but I did see that its apparently amazing. What I'm curious about is, what is the cultural impact of the show? Is it popular in Korea? Are people's reputations really on the line, or are they playing to a relatively small audience?

It's on cable at like 11 at night but still pretty popular all things considered.

I think the big attraction initially was getting together a group of people that were A to D list celebrities in their respective field interact together. Your normal Korean variety show consists of a bunch of celebrities/comedians playing a 'character' and the games are done primarily to entertain the audience (such as the cast/crew members being happy to lose games or let others win or catch up if it made for a more entertaining show) whereas the people on this show are (mostly) themselves and are pretty much in it to win it.

Meme Emulator
Oct 4, 2000

Blazing through the show now and just finished S2E2, is Dohye the only person on the show who hasnt gotten double eyelid surgery? Honestly its super hard to tell all the other women in the show apart because of rampant south korean plastic surgery.

Bankok
Sep 10, 2004

SPARTA!!!
7 is up.

Brigadier Sockface
Apr 1, 2007

Meme Emulator posted:

Blazing through the show now and just finished S2E2, is Dohye the only person on the show who hasnt gotten double eyelid surgery? Honestly its super hard to tell all the other women in the show apart because of rampant south korean plastic surgery.

What? What is this and how can you tell??

Argue
Sep 29, 2005

I represent the Philippines
E7

Sangmin: That was awesome; Sangmin supremacy. I already had an inkling that he'd figured it out first because of the weird die he showed Junghyun.

Junghyun: lol, can this guy get any more clueless

Jiwon: Well, that deathmatch didn't go how I had expected or hoped at all. That said, I laughed hard during the second tie after all that buildup.

Jinho: Beaten by Boxer in his last ep, and then having his deathmatch reduced to pure luck because the worst guy in the game didn't want him counting cards. For a round called "God's Judgement" this game sure did a good job of proving there isn't one. :argh:

Teek
Aug 7, 2006

I can't wait to entertain you.
S2E7: Good episode, you could figure something was up with the way Sangmin was made to go last. Surprised Jinho went home, to Jiwon of all people. The double tie was crazy.

Meme Emulator
Oct 4, 2000

Brigadier Sockface posted:

What? What is this and how can you tell??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_blepharoplasty

Fathers getting plastic surgery for thier daughters as a graduation present is a Thing in south korea. Since Dohye is a Go player and not a TV personality like all the other women its not shocking she hasnt been cut. I guess Minsoo was an auctioneer but she still has standards of beauty to contest with.

Meme Emulator fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jan 20, 2014

MisterZimbu
Mar 13, 2006
Not done with the episode yet (gotta go back to work), but drat that twist was extremely predictable. Called it pretty much when I saw the game.

Fast Luck
Feb 2, 1988

This was a pretty fun episode with people helping each other, running off to work on things on their own, a good little trick to the puzzle, etc. I guess the magnet thing was just a complete red herring... It was funny how lucky Yohwan and Junghyun got with their rolls, and then it all meant nothing once Sangmin got a chance to go. I wasn't that surprised he'd made 100% dice considering what he'd been up to something quite early on.

Crazy how that Indian hold'em game went down. The best player loses to the worst but it really couldn't have gone any other way. Jinho has the worst card in the deck so Jiwon goes all in. Jiwon has the worst card in the deck so Jinho has to call. Shame though. We'll have to see if the other players can pick up the slack with Jinho gone.

Fast Luck fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jan 20, 2014

BurningDance
Apr 27, 2010
Wow. I completely lost it at the double tie. It's sad to see a favorite go, but I find it to be a good way for him to go down. I wouldn't want to see him get taken out because of alliances, betrayals, or favoritism.

Teek
Aug 7, 2006

I can't wait to entertain you.

Fast Luck posted:

This was a pretty fun episode with people helping each other, running off to work on things on their own, a good little trick to the puzzle, etc. I guess the magnet thing was just a complete red herring...

I believe that was just a side effect of the way the die were connected, right? The players thought that was the trick, but it was just a result of the way they got the two sides to lock in place.

Fast Luck
Feb 2, 1988

Hmm, could be. I thought the dice were screw-in but I guess there could've been a magnetic component to it?

Arcanen
Dec 19, 2005

Jinho should have realised when he made the all six die that making another such die was possible. I suspect he did but ran out of time. It's possible his fall was because he didn't share with Hongchul and Jiwon; optimally they all could have combined to have a shared win. As much as I dislike Jiwon, his anti-Jinho card counting was a good one. It's too bad Jinho is gone, I'm not sure how many of the rest are capable of coming up with awesome strategies like he was

Brigadier Sockface
Apr 1, 2007
I See Sangmin's power level has increased!

Arcanen
Dec 19, 2005

Brigadier Sockface posted:

I See Sangmin's power level has increased!

I was waiting for a Super Sangmin joke as soon as he came in with that hair, but it never came.

Tonfa
Apr 8, 2008

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...

I've got to give Jiwon some credit, YOLOing Jinho out of the game was a big play. What a fitting way to go and an incredibly tense deathmatch. Just about had a meltdown when the second tie happened.

Zythrst
May 31, 2011

Time to join a revolution son, its going to be yooge!
Welp I'm on the anyone but Jiwon train now. I actually don't think Junghyun is that bad though clearly Sangmin is an overwhelming favorite with his avantages right now. One thing though about the death match that irritated me was having the pot ride on a tie. I mean what is that poo poo, is splitting the pot too difficult for the dealers or what? Why did they put that in, to save time or something? I mean yeah it ended up dramatic and tense and all, but putting it in the "the hands of God!" isn't what I tune in for.

Tonfa
Apr 8, 2008

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...

If Junghyun manages to stumble his way into winning the whole thing then I don't even loving know

PAL-18
Jan 21, 2007

Wanna see my batteries?
Ep.7: Lack of cooperation drove this game. From what we know optimal play only required 5 garnets to be spent. We learned that even/odd die + a special die can make all six/all five and that twisting the normal die makes a 3 and 4 die. Multiple people had figured out the various halves of this solution, and with slight collaboration would have figured it out. Who knows, maybe with sufficient collaboration there's a solution without buying at all! Particularly, if Jinho had not abandoned Hongchul and Jiwon, they would have figured this out. This seems like a poorly designed game since there's no competition for resources to prevent everyone from winning.

The death match game seems ok. Optimal play is both more difficult to achieve and less rewarding to implement compared to Indian poker, so random chance plays a much larger role. Having short chip stacks exacerbates the problem. I'm hoping to see this one in the final along with laser chess.

Sucks to see Jinho go out, but at least it was random instead of overwhelming collusion forcing him out. Nobody else this season has played the games with the same flourish that we've seen him capable of. Here's hoping someone else can step up.

Edit: After looking at all the dice, there's a little luck involved with getting the right special die to match your even/odd die. The 345 only goes with the odd die and the 456 only goes with the even. But I don't think that makes the game better.

PAL-18 fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 20, 2014

CharlieFoxtrot
Mar 27, 2007

organize digital employees



Yeah, so this thread probably deserves a title change now.

Fooma
Oct 15, 2010

nom nom nom
To be honest, if Sangmin is gone two episodes from now, I'm out. No one but Sangmin or Jinho have displayed the gamesmanship that makes this entertaining for me to watch. I could care less about second-rate celebrities stumbling through the rest of the puzzles otherwise.

RJWaters2
Dec 16, 2011

It was not not not so great
S2E7: Appropriate theme this week. "This is God's Judgement." I thought for certain Jiwon was going to lose to his bad dice, then choose Yooyoung for her garnets. Sad to see Jinho go to Jiwon. I knew from the beginning that Jinho couldn't repeat victory. If he made it to the final 4, the others would surely band together to knock him out before E12.
Now my hopes lie with Junghyun Mr. Magoo-ing his way to the end. Magoo fighting!

GraPar
Jun 2, 2011
Oh man, amazing episode. That's got to be one of the best deathmatches ever, right? Cannot remember the last time I was that goddamn tense watching TV. Second tie was hilarious. Obviously devastated that Jinho is out and that the most annoying player is still in, but on the plus side it does open the game up massively. I think it was kind of dumb by Jinho to call Jiwon in the first place though - obviously he was in a seemingly good position, but it was also obvious that he must have a lovely card + that trying to rush the game was massively advantageous to Jiwon. Going to be so weird next week watching an episode of The Genius that doesn't have Jinho in it!

Actual game was really good and well-designed this week, funny how well the order of the people rolling worked out. Love that even though he has the immunity idol (or whatever), Sangmin was still playing all-out.

Haha, Korean peeps be mad about this episode

Fast Luck
Feb 2, 1988

GraPar posted:

Oh man, amazing episode. That's got to be one of the best deathmatches ever, right? Cannot remember the last time I was that goddamn tense watching TV. Second tie was hilarious. Obviously devastated that Jinho is out and that the most annoying player is still in, but on the plus side it does open the game up massively. I think it was kind of dumb by Jinho to call Jiwon in the first place though - obviously he was in a seemingly good position, but it was also obvious that he must have a lovely card + that trying to rush the game was massively advantageous to Jiwon. Going to be so weird next week watching an episode of The Genius that doesn't have Jinho in it!

Actual game was really good and well-designed this week, funny how well the order of the people rolling worked out. Love that even though he has the immunity idol (or whatever), Sangmin was still playing all-out.

Haha, Korean peeps be mad about this episode

I dunno, how does Jinho not call there? He can see Jiwon has the worst card in the deck, a card that it's impossible to lose to. Moreover, he knows Jiwon was trying to force them to play with a low chip count so he knows Jiwon was planning to make it a short game regardless. Like, Jinho could have very well had a 3 or a 4 or something and Jiwon might still make that same move. There's no way you can't call him in that scenario where there's a 9/10 chance you just ended it and won and a 1/10 chance that you didn't even lose, but merely tied.

GraPar
Jun 2, 2011
To be honest I'd be interested to know if they knew what was going to happen if they tied. If they thought they would just get their chips back then obviously you'd have to go for it, but if they were aware that it was going to become totally luck-driven then it's definitely a dumber play, especially when you're pretty drat confident of winning in the long run, as Jinho must have been

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Rarity
Oct 21, 2010

~*4 LIFE*~
:stare: That goddam episode. Loved it so much. For as much poo poo as Jiwon gets, he played that death match really well from the moment he chose Jinho. And even though I was totally expecting Sangmin to have come up with a 100% guaranteed win, it still played out great.

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