Economics Challenge Series – Challenge 5: Ice Cream Game Challenge Results

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the results post for the Ice Cream Game Challenge. During the month of August, I will post all the results of the 2023 Economics Challenge Series. I will gradually work through all the seven challenges posted in July. This post contains a video generating the results of this challenge using a Microsoft Excel Model.

Winner Determined in this Video

What is the Ice Cream Game?

The ‘Ice Cream’ Game requires participants to select a beach and then a location on that beach to set-up an ice cream stand. The stand attracts customers based on its proximity to customers. The stand can only attract customers that do not need to pass another ice cream stand (competitor) to reach it. The ice creams sold by each stand are identical. Therefore, participants cannot compete on price or quality of product.

The objective of the game is to obtain the most customers. If two participants obtain the same number of customers, the participant who entered first wins.

Responses to the contest are made in the comments section of the post. The account with the winning entry will receive 30 Hive Power and the first 12 entries will be given upvotes.

The format of the required entry is explained in detail in the challenge itself.

Results of the ‘Ice Cream Game’ Challenge

Table 1 contains the locations selected by each participant.

Table 1: Locations selected by participants

Note: Participants in red are not considered as they have either selected a location taken by another participant or have been disqualified for other reasons.

Table 2 contains the number of customers on each beach. This includes a basic number that would be attracted to the beach if there was one ice cream stand as well as additional customers attracted to the beach as the number of ice cream stands increases (10% increase per an ice cream stand).

Table 2: Total number of customers for each beach

Note: Final values may exceed maximum because the stated maximum does not include the increase in the number of customers caused by more ice cream stands on the beach.

The values used in Table 2 have been used to determine the number of customers the participants’ ice cream stand received based on their locations. See Table 3 for the results of this challenge.

Table 3: Number of customers for each participant

A total of 20 participants entered this challenge. Therefore, the prizes for this challenge amount to 60 Hive Power: 40 Hive Power for the winner and 20 Hive Power for second place.

Congratulations to @emeka4 for winning the Ice Cream Game Challenge and a prize of 40 Hive Power and 30 points. @emeka4 achieved the joint highest number of customers with the selection of location NG. @happy411 and @voidd also achieved the same number of customers but came second and third respectively based on the order of entry into the challenge. They all obtained 466 customers each.

@happy411 wins 20 Hive Power and 20 points and @voidd wins 10 points.

Overall Series Score

After five challenges, the overall scores for the Challenge Series are as follows.

This table will be updated in every results post.

Tips for Future Ice Cream Games

The Ice Cream Game is considerably less complex than most of the other games in the Challenge Series. There are three important areas that participants should consider before selecting a location.

The expected number of customers for the beach. It is better to select a beach that attracts more customers in respect to its length. The mean number of customers is easy to calculate as a uniform distribution is used. A higher mean is also likely to attract more ice cream stands. This will further increase the number of customers to the beach. However, this also increases the risk of being surrounded by other ice cream stands; thus, limiting the number of customers.

The number of ice cream stands in close proximity. It is better to select a location that is not close to other ice cream stands. At the time of entry, this is difficult to determine as a participant entering later could choose the location next to yours. To reduce the chances of this happening, it might be wise to select a location next to an undesirable location. The least desirable locations are the end locations. Therefore, the second from the end location is likely to attract relatively more customers if the challenge has a high number of entries.

Timing of entry. Entering early has the advantage of winning tiebreakers, which is important in a game where many participants are likely to attract the same number of customers. However, entering early leaves the participant blind to the actions of others. It is possible that his or her location could become surrounded by later entries. Entering too late puts a participant at a disadvantage as all the good locations have probably been taken. Entering reasonably early is likely to be better than entering very early (e.g. in the first three) or late (e.g. after the 10th). This timing of entry is most advantageous when there are few entries or the when the actions of other participants are not strategic (e.g. selecting end locations).

More posts

I have several collection of posts. I have organised these collections based on content and purpose.

The first collection contains six collection posts created before PeakD had the collection feature. Four of these posts relate to the core of my content, one of them contains all my Actifit Posts, and one of the them contains my video course ‘Economics is Everyone’.

The second collection consists of the posts that I consider define my channel. These posts are significant in terms of content as well as how they contribute to the growth of the channel. These posts reveal the most about what I believe in.

The third and fourth collection is what I call my ‘Freedom-base Economics living book’. They contain all the posts that support my ideas about the value and power of freedom. Some of these posts explain what we can achieve with freedom and what we need to utilise it. Some of them explain how we are deprived of freedom and how we often give up freedom for security and comfort. The third collection concludes with possible scenarios depending on what we (society) choose to do.

Hive: Future of Social Media

Spectrumecons on the Hive blockchain