Talk:Twenty Questions

its a strategy game huh? lol

> The optimal strategy for the guesser is for each question to eliminate half the remaining possibilities.

I'm not certain that I believe this; my thinking is as follows: if there are 15 remaining possibilities, but one is 99% likely to be correct, surely the optimal strategy is to try that single likely possibility ? I suppose the optimal strategy would need to factor in the likelihood of each remaining possibility (and perhaps also the number of possibilities remaining, as it is preferable to eliminate some of them if many). -- ll


 * Yes, that's strictly right. It's a straightforward application of information theory: What you need to do is to ask a question that cuts in two the sums of the a priori probabilities of the possible outcomes remaining on each side.  I'll correct the text.  seglea 00:36, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * See also: binary search Dysprosia 01:27, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

OK, changed it. Now watch the NPOV protests about my example flood in!


 * Haha :) -- ll


 * added link to binary search seglea 06:49, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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