Fun game!! Participate if you can!

[Physics_wiz]

Alright I'll try to make this brief.

The rules:
PM with your guess of a non-negative integer (ie. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...)
The winner(s) will be the ones who choose the least number with the least number of pickers.

For example, if there are 5 people playing: A, B, C, D, and E.
A guesses 0, B guesses 0, C guesses 1, D and E guess 2: C would be the winner because he/she chose the least number with the least number of pickers.

I know some of you might have heard of this game before, but I'm relatively new to PF and I noticed that many people come here so I want to see how this game goes with a big number of people.

If I get a good response, I might run this game a few more rounds to see who won in more than 2-3 rounds or the number that has the most potential to win.

So, go ahead PM right now!!

P.S: I'll keep this open for two days and then post the results along with the winners. I will not alter any of the guesses and I already chose my lucky (or not) number. DO NOT put your guesses as replies to this message and please try not to post anything that hints to your guesses. Just post any questions/comments you have on the game. This game is not just about guessing, try to give it some thought, but as far as I know, there's no winning strategy.

Have fun picking the winning number,
Physics_wiz :biggrin:

[franznietzsche]

f = \sqrt{1889593}



g = \frac{f}{10\sqrt{2}}



h = 98568*g



i = \sqrt{h}



k = \frac{i}{6\sqrt{3}}


And what do you get? The number of the beast.

[Moonbear]

Alrighty, I sent in my guess.

[Physics_wiz]

Too lazy to try this in the calculator, but, hmm what's the point? :confused: :uhh:

[franznietzsche]

Too lazy to try this in the calculator, but, hmm what's the point? :confused: :uhh:


When you figure it out, it will all makes sense.

[Physics_wiz]

Is it related to the game?

[tribdog]

Hmm, I'm counting the number of PMs a person could receive before running out of alloted space. Less than the required amount for a "lot" of players I'd guess.
if you want to see this game with a lot of players there is some website, iwon.com or something like that, where you can pick a number and everyday the winner gets five bucks or something. Personally I don't enjoy picking random numbers, and if I did win it would just show how much I don't fit in and that I don't even think like everyone else. What are you doing? trying to make me feel bad? I get it, i'm a weirdo, thanks for reminding me.

[Physics_wiz]

Hmm, a moderator on another forum ran this game three rounds and the thing that amazed me was that one person won all three rounds. I'm just interested in seeing the results and I'd say that you're not a wierdo if you win...just know how to think right.

Also, I took into account the 35 PM limit and made a notepad file on which I'll put all the names and numbers that I get and delete the PM's after I copy them to the notepad file. :smile:

Send me a PM with a guess now! :biggrin:

[tribdog]

I'll bet $50 that on the other forum the guy who won three times in a row picked 1, which is lower than whatever the only other player (you) picked.

[Physics_wiz]

WRONG! both 0 and 1 were picked by two or more people in all three rounds. That guy picked three different numbers in the three rounds. That's why I wanted to try the game for myself on a forum with more people to see what the results look like.

Try to not make the results of the other forum influence your decisions. Who knows, maybe 0 will be the winning number.

[Physics_wiz]

"which is lower than whatever the only other player (you) picked"

There were more than just me and the other guy playing.

[tribdog]

Okay, I pick 2.

Added by Forum Editor->best advice is to just ignore tribdog, don't encourage him by arguing with his comments. Don't feed him and hopefully he'll go home.

[Physics_wiz]

Hehe, well I said in the opening post not to say anything about your numbers in replies. If you really want to pick 2 PM me with that number. :wink:

[Moonbear]

Hehe, well I said in the opening post not to say anything about your numbers in replies. If you really want to pick 2 PM me with that number. :wink:

Is this just a cheezy excuse to appear popular by getting lots of PMs? :wink:

[Physics_wiz]

Does it look that way? :rolleyes:

[franznietzsche]

Yeah it does.

[Physics_wiz]

Well, the purpose of the game was NOT to make me popular. Also, the purpose of PMing me with the guesses is that so noone would see what others guessed and then base his/her number on that (obviously).

[Gokul43201]

But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of y'all. Are you the sort of people who would pick a number near the middle or a number near the ends ? Now, a clever person would pick a number from the ends, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for something in the middle. I'm not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose a number from the middle. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose a number not in the middle...

OR I could take advantage of the fact that you have not imposed an upper bound and pick a hideously large number...

[Moonbear]

OR I could take advantage of the fact that you have not imposed an upper bound and pick a hideously large number...

I was wondering how long it would take you to get to that realization in that long explanation of your reasoning. :wink: I know where the beginning is, but I'm not sure what the middle or other end are.

[Physics_wiz]

Why would you pick "a hideously large number"?

The problem is that you are not the only one who thinks that way. When other people think like you, the one with the smallest "hideously large number" will win (assuming all the numbers under it get more than one guess and no one else picked your number).

Try to find the ultimate winning number :wink: ALL you gotta do is figure out how people on this forum will decide on which number to guess and then pick the lowest number with the lowest number of pickers (pretty easy huh?). But again, if they think like you think and know you're going to think that way, they might try to counter your strategy and pick another number. It's an infinite loop of thinking, but just try to guess how far your forum friends want to think and then when you finally decide on a number, pick something else!! Ahh...this is too confusing, even for me!! :yuck: :eek: :grumpy:

[Gokul43201]

Oh, I didn't read carefully enough, I guess...I didn't know that a tie was broken by the smaller number :redface:

PS: The rest of the answer, Moonbear, was paraphrising Vizzini's thoughts during the battle of wits in The Princess Bride.

[Physics_wiz]

The rules:
PM with your guess of a non-negative integer (ie. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...)


No negative numbers/fractions/decimals please.

[BobG]

Why would you pick "a hideously large number"?

The problem is that you are not the only one who thinks that way. When other people think like you, the one with the smallest "hideously large number" will win (assuming all the numbers under it get more than one guess and no one else picked your number).

Try to find the ultimate winning number :wink: ALL you gotta do is figure out how people on this forum will decide on which number to guess and then pick the lowest number with the lowest number of pickers (pretty easy huh?). But again, if they think like you think and know you're going to think that way, they might try to counter your strategy and pick another number. It's an infinite loop of thinking, but just try to guess how far your forum friends want to think and then when you finally decide on a number, pick something else!! Ahh...this is too confusing, even for me!! :yuck: :eek: :grumpy:

I don't think anyone will pick a number higher than they can count on their fingers.

[franznietzsche]

No negative numbers/fractions/decimals please.

It was worth a try

[Moonbear]

PS: The rest of the answer, Moonbear, was paraphrising Vizzini's thoughts during the battle of wits in The Princess Bride.

I loved that movie. I'll have to watch it again since it seems I've forgotten important parts!

[Physics_wiz]

One more day and I will post the results. I didn't get as many as I wanted at all, so if you didn't PM me with a guess feel free to do it :wink:

[Physics_wiz]

I know I made you all wait for this long enough. I'm sure you were all hitting the refresh button like crazy waiting for me to post the scores and the winner of the game (well at least maybe the 4 of you who actually PMed me with something:rolleyes:). I was being sarcastic if you didn't know, here are the scores (number followed by who guessed it):
0--BobG
6--Physics_wiz
10-gerben
19-Moonbear
23-The Bob

So, I guess BobG won by guessing 0. This would NOT have been the case if everyone who viewd this thread PMed me with a number, but oh well...wishful thinking :biggrin:.

Looking at the scores, I think all the ones who sent me a number thought a step further and posted a relatively not so low number except for BobG who went with his first intuition. Or maybe BobG was the one who went a step further???

[BobG]

A combination of my first intuition that no one would gess a number higher than they could count on their fingers, plus process of elimination.

Me and a buddy were in a saw mill while I was thinking of your game and he interrupted me by screaming.

I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I just lost one of my fingers! I just touched this spinning thing here and.... Damn, there goes another one!"

By time we finished analyzing the problem, there wasn't much left to base my guess on.

[Physics_wiz]

A combination of my first intuition that no one would gess a number higher than they could count on their fingers, plus process of elimination.

Me and a buddy were in a saw mill while I was thinking of your game and he interrupted me by screaming.

I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I just lost one of my fingers! I just touched this spinning thing here and.... Damn, there goes another one!"

By time we finished analyzing the problem, there wasn't much left to base my guess on.

Hehe, sorry about your fingers, but eh...they were worth it. You are the winner! :biggrin: :rofl:

[AKG]

Ouch! You'd think that on a board as crowded as this one, more than 5 people would play. If anyone's interested, you can see what we did over at PhilosophyForums.com:

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/showthread.php?t=10850

We ran 5 games with player turnouts of 15, 10, 23, 19, and 8 for games 1, 2, ..., 5 respectively. We also did certain things like slightly alter the rules of each game. I think games 1 and 2 were the same. For game 3, I think the difference was that every so often, I would give updates as to how many people played (the number of people in the game, of course, affects your guess). I believe one game was played with the theme that you could make two guesses, so you could make one guess, then wait, see how many people play and/or see if anyone else announces their guesses (there's some strategic benefit in announcing your guess, as you can see if you check out that thread) and then make a second corrected guess. You can also play around with the rules about announcing your guess(es). We also considered (but don't think we ever did it) doing something like announcing fake results of the game, and then giving only a select number of people the real results, as the results of a game give you insight as to how people play, and people who have that insight would presumably have an advantage over those with fake-insight.

This game can be interesting, especially if you haven't played before (after conducting the game a number of times, I did kind of get bored of it). Try again Physics_wiz, I'll even play this time. Note, the game really only works if, I'd say, at least 15 people play. It's free, it's pretty easy, and takes very little time (for those of you who spend all day here, this should be nothing ;)), so why not play?

[Physics_wiz]

Hmm, a moderator on another forum ran this game three rounds and the thing that amazed me was that one person won all three rounds. I'm just interested in seeing the results and I'd say that you're not a wierdo if you win...just know how to think right.

Ouch! You'd think that on a board as crowded as this one, more than 5 people would play. If anyone's interested, you can see what we did over at PhilosophyForums.com:

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/...ead.php?t=10850

Heyo AKG, I didn't know you were the philosophyforums AKG too. I was refering to Wax on philosophyforums in the first quote :biggrin: I played in 4 of the 5 rounds there and became interested in the game. After seeing the number of people here, I thought it would be pretty interesting to play here and see the results with a huge (didn't happen) number of people.

Anyways, I'll run another round. Results will be posted in 2 days again. PM me with your guesses...RIGHT NOW!