[d20] What don't you know? (free pdf books)

[reveal]

[imager]http://www.thele.com/thelegames/images/html/quiz.gif[/imager]NEW QUIZ! Please note that this weeks current winners are not eligable for this quiz (please give others a chance).

Prize is 1 free pdf book of your choice, as listed in the first post.


ON TO THE QUESTION!

Battle Beasts were those little action figures that had an element associated with it... "Fire Burns Wood," "Water Puts out Fire," "Wood beats Water!"

What cartoon did BATTLE BEASTS first appear in?



THE LE GAMES - WE ENHANCE WORLDS

Transformers?

 

[Wystan]

Transformers: Headmasters

Would have been included in the 4th season as well if it had continued.

 

[TheLe]

We Have A Winner!

Congrats to Reveal and Wystan! Reveal was the first person to correctly answer -- Battle Beasts were part of the Takara line of toys and so they made a guest appearance in Transformers (also from Takara)!

Since Wystan also got it correct with a more detailed answer, I will also award him the win! (the cartoon that Battle Beasts appeared in, Transformers: Headmasters, was only available in Japan and never made it here to the states as a regular series.)

Reveal, I have already emailed you.

Wystan, please contact me with your winning selection and I will fire it off to you.

Good work, Transfans!

~Le

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Oh, man! I used to own a bunch of those!

If only I could remember ... ( )

 

[LeifVignirsson]

Awesome... I am going to have to monitor this now so I can try to get some fine, FINE Le Game products... They are one of the few that I get quite giddy about when they release a new product, having at least half of hte Unothrodox line in my library already.

(No, I don't work for them, I just support their product 100% and no, I am not being comped for a plug )

 

[Pinotage]

Thanks for the prize. I sent you an email - the address starts with "ianc"

The answer to the dragon question seemed odd to me so I looked up some references and reviewed the proofs and I'm pretty sure the ones I saw were wrong. My calcs show that you have a 50% chance of winning. I wasn't elegible to enter, but if anyone reading this knows Bayesian analysis I'd be interedted in a critique of my calculations.

I think you need to look at it a little simpler. Assign 2 probabilities:

P(Door chosen holds the artifact) = 33%
P(Other Doors hold the artifact) = 66%

The thing to remember is that once the dragon choose one of the other doors, the probability that the artifact is behind the other doors doesn't change. So, if there are 3 doors, and you choose 1, then the probability that the artifact is behind the other two doors is 66%. Just because the dragon opens one of those doors, it doesn't mean the probability changes. It stays the same, hence the reason you should switch since now the other door on its own has a 66% chance of holding the artifact. It's probably easier to envisage it if you have 10 or 100 doors and the dragon eliminates all of the other doors but one.

So if you have 10 doors, the chance you chose correctly is 10%. The probability that it's behind one of the other 9 doors is 90%. But if you eliminate 8 of those, then the probability still remains 90% that it's behind the other door, again the reason for the switch.

Pinotage

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The answer to the dragon question seemed odd to me so I looked up some references and reviewed the proofs and I'm pretty sure the ones I saw were wrong.

Let there exist X doors. One door is the correct choice.

The chance of picking the correct door is 1/X. The chance of picking the incorrect door, therefore, is 1-1/X.

After you have chosen a door, the set of X doors may be viewed as two subsets: "your door," and "all other doors." The chance that subset "your door" is correct is 1/X. The chance that subset "all other doors" is correct is 1-1/X.

For any X greater than 2, the chance that subset "all other doors" is correct is greater than the chance that subset "your door" is correct.

By way of example, let X = 100.

When you randomly choose a door, there is a 1 / 100 chance that you picked correctly (subset "your door"). There is a 99 / 100 chance that you picked incorrectly (i.e., 99% chance subset "all other doors" is correct).

When the non-winning doors are removed, you still have the two subsets: "your door" vs. "all other doors." "All other doors" still has a 99 / 100 chance to be correct.

In other words, switching works because you are more likely to be wrong on your first choice than right on your first choice.

 

[Zjelani]

Thanks for the prize. I sent you an email - the address starts with "ianc"

The answer to the dragon question seemed odd to me so I looked up some references and reviewed the proofs and I'm pretty sure the ones I saw were wrong. My calcs show that you have a 50% chance of winning. I wasn't elegible to enter, but if anyone reading this knows Bayesian analysis I'd be interedted in a critique of my calculations.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but here ya go (not my critique, of course).
http://astro.uchicago.edu/rranch/vkashyap/Misc/mh.html
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

And just to keep throwing links out there, here's a nice explanation with some diagrams tha really helpd me wrap my brain around it (ohh... pretty pictures)
http://math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Monty/montybg.html

And a handy Java Applet so you can try it yourself:
http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/javahtml/LetsMakeaDeal.html

I have well-educated relatives who still assure it that it must be wrong somewhere and something is rigged.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I don't want to hijack the thread, but here ya go (not my critique, of course).
http://astro.uchicago.edu/rranch/vkashyap/Misc/mh.html

Okay, got it. I ignored part of the structure of the game. I had a course on this stuff the first time I was in grad school, but I was never particularly good at it.

Anyway, to un-hijack the thread, I had a chance to glance through Unorthodox Witches, and there were some very cool ideas in there.

 

[Glyfair]

So, once the dragon shows you death in one of the other doors, it still does not change the probability. Your door still has a 33% probability of having the artifact, while there is still a 66% probability that the artifact is behind one of the other two doors. The dragon exposing one of the doors does not change that.

Of course, that's assuming you know in advance he will always show you a door without the artifact after you choose. If there are cases where he won't show you a door, that changes the probabilities (depending on when he does or doesn't).