jonottawa

If there were a SEQUENCE to the 'auction' you could say: Person 1, 2 and 3 should pass if the last guy's hat is black Person 1 and 2 should pass if the 3rd guy's hat is black Person 1 should pass if the 2nd guy's hat is black Person 1 should take a wild guess (for the sake of argument, we'll say he guesses black) if the other 3 hats are red. That agreement loses only to 4 red hats. Wouldn't surprise me if Josh's answer is best, but maybe not. Blofeld, what number should we be shooting for?

You can do slightly better, i think. If the first guy sees three colors the same, he votes the other color, if he sees a 2-1 mix, he abstains. Then the next guys know to follow your strategy, and they never lose (as 3-0 color amongst themselves will not exist). So you lose only to 4-0 (not 3-0). So the results of this strategy is All four same color, you lose You win, per force in all other situations. So that the math is, 4 - alike (12.5%) you lose, all others, you win (87.5%). This odds were calculated on the chance of the same color comming up 4 times in a row, i figured as follows: the first hat will be some color, so the chance for the next three to be the same color would be 12.5% (0.5x0.5x0.5), so the correct statistics would be lose 12.5% of the time, win 87.5% of the time. (alternatively, teh chance for 4 red hats is .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 = 6.25, chance for four blacks is same 6.25, so chance of all one color is the sum or 12.5) I started thinking along the same lines but this doesn't work. The other 3 guys can't know when they're 3-0. Of course, if you see that they're 3-0 it doesn't hurt anything for you to vote the other color, but all 3 other guys will too and you still lose. Everybody votes simultaneously ... The problem is going to throw bridge players off because we think of an auction and a clockwise sequence. This is everyone 'bidding/passing' at the same time/all at once. I can't improve on Josh's effort (at least so far) but he seems to imply it's gotta be person 1 who abstains. It can be any of the 4 since they're essentially interchangeable.

Should this thread be locked? I think the sooner it drops off the active threads list the better. The issue's been resolved and I've said all I want to say about it. Most people feel the same, I think. To post below: Ben, excuse me for saying so, but you did plenty to participate in the debate when you arbitrarily deleted the thread I started to discuss the leniency petition that Josh and I were sponsoring. I asked a simple question ... 'Should this thread be locked?' If you want to get huffy about it, be my guest. Nobody is discussing the issue of this thread: Should there be a petition against the USBF? Why? Because the issue is resolved. If they want to discuss what the women did, there's a thread for that.

Art's objection was to the director call itself, not to what she said when he got there. If she was abusive/rude to the director, that's a whole 'nother issue. Asking for an adjusted score isn't necessarily inappropriate. It depends how it's done. "I was going to balance. He tanked for 45 seconds and passed with a 6 count. I'd like an adjusted score. Thank-you." in a calm and friendly voice would be fine. Anyway, I've weighed in. Y'all can agree or disagree (I anticipate more of the latter than of the former somehow.)

Hanoi is mistaken that dynamite should have balanced anyway. In a borderline case it is 100% normal to draw an inference here that the opp is showing extras and pass. Blofeld is wrong when he repeatedly assumes that the call was in tempo without any evidence to support his assumption. The original post says that there was a LONG pause. He's also wrong when he says that there isn't a problem. This is a BIG problem and needs to be nipped in the bud. Hotshot I mostly agree with. Art's suggestion that little dynamite deserves a lecture is completely off the mark. Her behavior was totally appropriate. Now, if she had a hand that no reasonable person would consider balancing with and did that, that would be a different story. But the premise is that she had a borderline decision. Other suggestions about disliking people, nobody caring, doing anything you want to and double-dummy bidding are misguided. Tcyk, it sounds like you handled the situation reasonably well. Better I'd say, than most of the people offering suggestions would have. You've illustrated well why novices need to be taught about ethics. At a tournament, an adjusted score would definitely be in order. At a club game, for a first offense, hard to fault what you did. I'd have probably given little dynamite an average plus and let the novice's score stand.

I don't see how this is a different problem than the 2 prisoner solution that Han posted in the other thread. Adam and Bob are instructed as follows: Adam, say Bob's hat color Bob, say the opposite of Adam's hat color. Carl and Doug are given the same instructions: Carl, say Doug's hat color Doug, say the opposite of Carl's hat color. 2 of the guys will be right, they all win. Edit: I misread the problem. I stopped reading after 'They win if at least one person gets it right.' I'll leave my stupid answer up.

Here's my solution. There may be other ways to solve it.

Glad I didn't bet. Fooled again. :) Great problem. "One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider."

with two prisoners the problem is trivial. One guesses 1, one guess 2, at least one of them has to be right, so they go free. With the problem as stated, each prisoner guess a unique number from 1 to 100, at least one of them has to be right, so they all go free. Surely this is not so stupid to be that easy. The problem needs to be restated... ?????

I agree with hrothgar. If it's some semantical game (does 'inclusive' imply that the numbers 1 and 100 must appear? if so, all prisoners can guess 1 or all prisoners can guess 100) then whatever. It's implied that each number is random and that since repetitions are allowed, not all numbers must appear. It doesn't work with 2 prisoners either. Each has a 50% chance of guessing wrong in that case.

Group Hug! :huh:

Find a wise old dwarf as quickly as possible. I don't think it's clear from the parameters whether they are permitted to signal each other in ANY way, are they? If they aren't (let's say they're locked up in solitary) then this is an impossible problem. It'd be like trying to pick a roulette number based on the last 20 rolls. If they are, then this is a really simple problem.

The kerfuffle that prompted the creation of this thread SEEMS to have disappeared. It's eerily quiet around here. Of course, depending on what happens in SF, things might well explode again. I didn't vote. None of the options really captured it for me. If I were a moderator in a free (in the monetary sense) forum, I wouldn't look too favorably on people who: 1. Argue with people, throw mud, get mud thrown back, and then run crying to me. 2. Follow another poster from thread to thread doing 1. 3. Witness such an argument, and run crying to me because they harbor animosity towards one of the participants in the argument. 4. See unpopular views expressed in a 'free-ish speech' forum and then run crying to me. 5. Wake up, roll out of bed, look in the mirror, and then run crying to me. On the other hand, I'd probably get sick of fielding complaints about the same poster over and over again, even if I knew that aside from being deliberately provocative on occasion, the guy's behavior was well within established community norms. So I might privately ask him to cool it.

Edit: Things seem to have calmed down, so in the interest of keeping them that way, I've hidden the text of this post, which might have been a little too blunt.

Shubi from Ottawa Shubi? How do you know Shubi? Edit: Shubi's a great guy. I didn't know he posted here (though I see him on BBO all the time.)

Edit: Things seem to have calmed down, so in the interest of keeping them that way, I've hidden the text of this post, which might have been a little too blunt.

Since Justin's signature isn't spam (it's been the same for months, linking to a blog that no longer is active) I assume we can agree that my new signature isn't either. All I asked for was one thread. I did not spam anything anywhere. There are 3 or 4 threads discussing this issue and I only posted my petition notice once in each of those threads. I loathe spam. I find signature lines to be spammy, which is why I haven't had one until now. Edit: I guess I should clarify that the first post in this thread (by me) was put there by Uday. This post I entered here on my own.

I tend to agree. That's why I don't think we should change it. If it took us this long to bring it up, is it really that important? I tend to think not. Anyway, I'm gonna be offline until this evening. I'll check in later.

A better choice would have been using 'respectfully' instead of 'respectably', as someone pointed out to me yesterday. Oops! Jon is it possible to change it, maybe just sending out an email to all who signed to let them know? You know what? I almost said something about respectably/respectfully but didn't want to sound too anal. (I was going to suggest changing the first respectably to respectfully and then change the signature to Sincerely,) Oh well. I think we should just leave it. One really shouldn't tinker with a petition once the signatures start, imo. If you feel super strongly about it, I will, though. But I don't think it's worth spamming people about. I could make a note in the sidebar saying what we changed and how many signatures there were at the time.

Glad to hear it, Keylime. Speaking of cooler heads prevailing on this issue ... I'd appreciate it if the readers of this thread would read and consider signing this petition I sponsored, based on a letter by Richard E. Willey and edited by Josh Donn. Thanks. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/USBFVeniceCupTeam/ Edit: This was an on-topic post in this thread about reaction (the BW editorial response) to the controversy. Ulven's post below (before he edited it) was a false claim that I am 'spamming' threads. A single on-topic post in a thread relating to the issue doesn't constitute spam. I had a thread up on this particular petition and it was taken down.

jffanclub: This is a bridge forum. You posted your name and I posted a link to an article that you submitted to the Daily Bulletin, a bridge publication. That you would take offense to that or say anything to Uday about it at all speaks for itself. When someone googled me and found out I was involved in a hearing against Unit 192 almost 10 years ago (a significantly more controversial type of thing than just posting a link to an article) did I complain? No. I said (paraphrasing) 'start up a thread and I'll be happy to discuss it with you but let's not hijack this thread with this topic.' I sure didn't run to Uday about it.

I signed the petition reluctantly, and notated my objection. I do think some type of sanction needs to be applied, just not to the extremes that are currently being proposed. Change the word harshly to severely or whatever wording you would choose to indicate that the sanctions being "sought" or discussed are simply too extreme. You somewhat indicated that in the last paragraph: So I finally chose to sign it. If it was not for that paragraph, I probably would not have. Thanks Bid. We're up to 50 signatures and counting. A lot of interesting comments (including yours, I'm guessing. Go Tarheels!)

Judging from the 2004 Election controversy, you're not very good at your job. Jon -- not okay to get this kind of personal. No big deal. I found it actually quite funny. Plus, the 900 arrests per year that were occurring in Cleveland for two laws that had remained on the books until I arrived, reduced to 0 after I arrived and successfully challenged them, gives me quite a few counter votes to jonottawa. LOL Lots of additional stories, of course. Glad to hear it, Ken. The number of people our government incarcerates for trivial offenses is a disgrace. Good on you for doing your part to reduce that number somewhat. Welcome to the forums, Stacy. Nice to see you posting. I'd be happy to discuss with you privately, or on either of our respective blogs, whether it was too personal or not. But I've been asked politely to cut back on posts that stir up controversy and any detailed response I might make here might do that. I'll just say I wouldn't have made a post like that to someone I didn't have a history of 'back and forth' with and hopefully we can leave it at that.

For what it's worth, I'm a Pastafarian. Here's a letter one of our members sent to a Kansas school board in an intelligent design case: http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/ Here are a couple of excerpts: "Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him." "Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease."

I've been meaning to watch this. Here's a link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html