
1
CSCI 100
Think Like Computers
Lecture 10
Fall 2008
Homework 2
•1. Draw your own risk curve (i.e. Utility-EMV curve) to
determine your risk profile. Once you have your curve,
go to www.masslottery.com and study the 5 lottery
games (MegaMillions, CashWindfall, Megabucks,
MassCash, Numbers5) or any other lottery games and
verify that your risk profile correctly reflects your
willingness to play in each game.
Homework 2
•2. More on Jackpot. Answer these questi ons based on
things we learned in this class.
Explain why more people are buy tickets when the
jackpot becomes bigger.
The jackpot has grown to $300 million. The chance of
winning the jackpot is 1/150 million. Should you play?
Why or why not.
When the jackpot is $300 million, should Bill Gates
play this game by buying all number combinations?
Will you participate in group buying? Say 100 people
each pay $1 and share the winning?
Homework 2
•3. You are considering joining a poker game, but you
suspect there may be cheating going on. In fact, you
estimate that there is a 70% chance that the other
players are cheating. You are a good player, so you can
expect to win $300 if the other players are not cheating.
However, if the other players are cheating, you will lose
$100.
•(a) Should you join the game?
•(b) Now suppose that someone you trust offers to tell
you whether there is cheating going on or not. How
much would you be willing to pay for this information?
Homework 2
•4. You are shopping for a home mortgage.
There are 4 banks (A,B,C,D) that you could go to, each will offer
you a deal, but you have to make a decision on the spot. (No
regrets.) Given any 2 offers, you can tell which one is better, but
you don’t know more than that.
Once you accept a deal, you’re bound to it (so no need to look
further).
Furthermore, you have to accept one offer (i.e. if you’ve rejected
all first three offers, then you have to accept the last one,
regardless its quality).
•Decide your best shopping strategy. Draw a decision
tree that reflects your strategy, and calculate the
chances that you’ll end up with the best quality offer, 2nd
best, 2nd worst, and worst offer.
Machine Learning
•It’s hard to come up with good strategies.
And it takes a lot of effort to encode/program
them.
•Let machines learn!
From us … by themselves … or a mix
•Example: NPC strategies