On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Linda Alvord <lindaalv...@verizon.net> wrote: > Challenge 5 Super Bowl Supposition PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND UNTIL 2/6/2012 12 > am EST
I am going to interpret "PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND UNTIL 2/6/2012 12 am EST" as meaning "please do not send solutions or code to the list until after that time". This message has ambiguity which confuses me, and I think that waiting for a week to address that ambiguity would be unconscionable. > As the Super Bowl approaches, suppose it will be decided like baseball. Four > of seven games determines a winner. Also suppose that the NFL has won the > first game. This paragraph raises the question "which Super Bowl"? On the one hand, "the" Super Bowl would likely mean the upcoming super bowl: Super Bowl XLVI. On the other hand, the supposition that the NFL has won the first game suggests that we are dealing with a super bowl from before the AFL/NFL merger (which I think was 1970). It's also possible that this was a typo and "NFC" was meant. > Simulate results of 2000000 series and provide the number of times the NFL > wins in 4 5 6 7 games. If the AFL wins this Extended Super Bowl > Contest, the result is an 8 . Create a 2000000 item list of number of > games necessary to determine a winner and provide a frequency distribution. Again, the distinction between AFL and NFL suggests a historical setting. But now we have a new issue: what kind of simulation is supposed to be performed? I have friends who invest quite a lot of effort into fantasy football, so I know that there exists quite a large body of information which might be relevant to different kinds of simulations. A quick web search finds me, as an example: http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/35095/2011-strength-of-schedule or things like http://www.fftoolbox.com/football/2011/cheatsheets.cfm We could perform a simulation based on a flat chance for one side to win, or we could construct simulations at a finer level of detail, perhaps predicting each team's score for each game, or perhaps down to the level of simulating each team's plays along with their duration and outcomes. This sort of thing could take days to complete 2 million simulations, but given the "please do not respond until" constraint, that is not necessarily a bad thing. > Now, confirm that your results are reasonable with a theoretical argument. And here everything breaks down for me. There are just too many ambiguities for me to imagine that any results could be reasonable. Also, in my experience: when I am given a specification which is ambiguous, or unreasonable, it's my duty to push back and ask for clarification. But maybe not: Personally, I never watch the Super Bowl, and only hear about it from friends and acquaintances, and perhaps there is some additional relevant information that would help me resolve what is being asked for here, if only I were more familiar with the Super Bowl. In any event, I think that if this task is meant to be implemented in code we need to know what kind of simulation is being asked for. At the very least we should know what kind of Super Bowl we are simulating. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
