Coding challenge suggestion

[Daklu]

I received my introduction to Labview last summer with the Tic Tac Toe coding challenge and had a great time doing it!  I'm a bit suprised another one hasn't been run since then.  In keeping with the principle of Tic Tac Toe I have a few ideas for a coding challenge:

(These all are based around game theory concepts because that is what I find fun and interesting.)

In all of these games the winner of the match is the program that scores more points.  I propose the overall challenge winner is decided by W-L record from the matches rather than a sum of points from all matches.  I also think each match should be run with some known N number of games.  Having a known end point introduces some interesting decisions.

1. Prisoner's Dilemma - Straight 1v1 heads up play
   (Possible point values: A&B stay silent - 3, 3;  A defects & B stays silent - 5, 0;  A&B defect - 1, 1)
• Since always choosing Defect guarantees against a loss, maybe there should be some minimum score that must be achieved in order to qualify for a win.  For example, given a match of 100 games, if A Defects every game while B employs the common Tit for Tat strategy, at the end of the game A will win with 104 points agaunst B's 99 points.  If both of them remain silent for the entire game each will score 300 points.  Maybe the qualification score should be 200 or so.
2. Diner's Dilemma - A multiplayer version of Prisoner's Dilemma
3. Multi Choice Prisoner's Dilemma - A PD variant that allows each player more than one choice
• "Consider the following two-player game: both players simultaneously choose a whole number from 0 to 3. Both players then win the smaller of the two numbers in points. In addition, if one player chooses a larger number than the other, then s/he has to give up two points to the other." Copied from Wikipedia
  
  For example, if A choses 3 and B chooses 2, each player receives the small of the two numbers or 2 in this case.  Furthermore, A forfeits 2 of his points to B because he chose the higher number.  Final outcome for this game is A=0, B=4.

Thoughts?  Critiques?

Dave

Reference Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diner%27s_dilemma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

[Brian_K.]

Hi Daklu,

I am glad you enjoyed the competition, and the suggestions you gave were great.  I am trying to track down the coordinator for the competition so that we can draw there attention to the post.  Do you remember who that was?

[shoneill]

I think Bruce Ammons coordinated the last one, but as to whoever was responsible for the challenges within NI, I don't know.


A new challenge!  Who's responsible for the Challenge?

😉

Shane.

[Ben]

Bruce worked with Philip Courtois (former LabVIEW Champions Keeper).

Philip has moved onto bigger and beter things and has been replaced by Jeff.

Ben

[tst]

I assume Ben is refering to this Jeff.

[Brian_K.]

If you haven't already, I would take your suggestion and paste it here:

http://sine.ni.com/nilvz/LabVIEWZone?Application=CodeChallengeSuggestion

[Daklu]

Done.