shooting room note

Steve Witham (sw@tiac.net)
Tue, 31 Dec 1996 03:36:23 -0500

For a good time, try calculating the average number of players in a run of
the shooting room game. This calculation throws an interesting light on
questions like how to play "given you're in the shooting room game,"
what a "typical game" would be like, and what fraction of the players are
in the last round (i.e., what are we taking a fraction *of*?)

It will also help calculate the number of times each person should slap
their forehead and say "Doh!"

See if you can modify the game so that the majority of players are still
in the last round, there is an "average number of players", and the
number of players still increases by an integer factor in each round.
I wasn't able to do it.

Is there still a paradox if you limit the pool of available
players, or (equivalently) the maximum number of rounds?

--Steve

--
sw@tiac.net                                    http://www.tiac.net/users/sw
"It just keeps going and going and therefore you yourself have to keep
 going and going." --Energizer Bunny researcher