Adam Wuerl

3,620 reputation

1431

bio	website	wuerl.calepin.co
	location	Seattle, WA
	age	33
visits	member for	2 years, 4 months
	seen	May 2 at 23:28
stats	profile views	51

aerospace engineer, Star Wars nerd, PowerPoint hater, and family barista, @wuerl

	3,620 reputation	bio	website	wuerl.calepin.co	visits	member for	2 years, 4 months
1431 badges		location	Seattle, WA		seen	May 2 at 23:28

summary answers questions tags badges favorites bounties reputation activity

97 Comments

suggestions reviews revisions comments badges posts accepts all

Jan 3	comment	In Warhammer fantasy, is it permissible to make an army using an old version of a race's codec? I didn't explicitly ask, but now that I'm reading it, the rationale for why only the latest rules would be allowed is the interesting analysis. The last point rings especially true, and the penultimate one speaks to my specific example of the way under-priced bolt throwers.
Nov 30	comment	What do you recommend putting in an Arkham Horror quick reference sheet? I'll leave open for a while to see if anyone else wants to answer. Not that I'm asking for someone to generate one for this answer, but a graphical version of what you wrote above (e.g. a picture of a monster card with all the symbols annotated with their meaning, or a picture of a mythos card with callouts showing the order you process the card and notes like on clue placement) would help so much. Part of the reason the game takes so long is that there's usually a couple of people (myself always) who don't know the game well and slow everyone else down.
Nov 30	comment	What do you recommend putting in an Arkham Horror quick reference sheet? Wow. #1 nicely done. #2 game is super complicated. #3 there are lots of little things we were doing wrong (e.g. a clue appeared where I was and I didn't get to keep it so had to wait a whole other turn to pick it up since it was the 5th one I needed to close the penultimate gate; we did monster surges at the double gate, not evenly distributed;
Nov 5	comment	What is the optimal method to shuffle an organised deck of cards possible duplicate of What is a safe and accurate technique for shuffling cards?
Nov 5	comment	What is the optimal method to shuffle an organised deck of cards They are also really hard on cards, so good for cheap poker ones, but bad for CGC.
Aug 23	comment	When was the Lord Licorice character added to Candy Land? @Pat - what does? the question about losing a turn on the unique spaces? If that's what you meant I'll write another one later today and edit this one accordingly.
Aug 20	comment	When was the Lord Licorice character added to Candy Land? That timeline meshes perfectly with my not remembering LL, since I was born in 1980 and would have owned and played on a set published at least a year or two prior to 1985. Do you know if there were any lose a turn spaces in the pre-1985 games? I wonder if they were introduced with the game's first antagonist?
Aug 3	comment	What is a good board game to use for a programming competition @Ryan, just trying to stem the legitimate tide of down votes while simultaneously embracing the SE concept of editing answers that are out-of-date.
Jul 23	comment	Recommended Axis & Allies alternative rules / variations? I didn't feel it was appropriate to add another answer, since that would make 3 and it's not my idea, but there are MIT house rules for A&A 2nd edition.
Jul 17	comment	What is a good board game to use for a programming competition @aramis good point. I could see the details of how to code up treaties and negotiations as being too difficult in practice. It would be like a multi-dimensional prisonsers' dilemma problem times 1000.
Jun 21	comment	How many spins does it take to complete a game of Hi Ho! Cherry-O? If you make the edit to the code and also put the link to the image in the body we'll edit the post for you. I'd recommend two runs: one for 1-player to prove your code matches the Markov result, and one for 2-player.
Jun 21	comment	How many spins does it take to complete a game of Hi Ho! Cherry-O? You know what? Good point. The other simulations and the Markov chain example are all answering the question of how many spins it takes to amass 10 cherries, and now that I think about it, that is a totally different question than how many turns (i.e. each player spinning once) it takes to end the game. In fact, I think you're the only person to answer what is really the actual question being asked. I think we could validate your sim by running it with num_players = 1 and seeing if the results match the others.
Jun 21	comment	How many spins does it take to complete a game of Hi Ho! Cherry-O? +1 for Markov chains, which is really the only way to analytically model this type of problem, and for finding prior art. I notice everyone else with a correct answer used a Monte Carlo simulation that they had to code up themselves. I wonder what was the fastest, C, Python, or Google. :)
Jun 21	comment	How many spins does it take to complete a game of Hi Ho! Cherry-O? I'm not sure what's wrong with your code, but it doesn't appear to be giving the right results. It sounds like you were attempting the same type of Markov chain approach mentioned in another answer. Perhaps the referenced paper can help.
Jun 20	comment	How many spins does it take to complete a game of Hi Ho! Cherry-O? Can you clarify your request for expected # of cherries? I don't think it's quite defined enough to give a mathematically precise answer. As you note, the expected value is heavily dependent on the number of cherries pre-spin. Averaging together these expected values wouldn't be useful, IMHO. A table of expected cherries as a function of cherries could be tabulated, but that would be heavily influenced (in a non-helpful way) by the possibility of losing all. I think much more useful would be the average change if you don't lose them all, as a function of # of cherries pre-spin.
Jun 20	comment	How many spins does it take to complete a game of Hi Ho! Cherry-O? Sorry, have to downvote just because the things not modeled (i.e. impact of lose all cherries and not being able to have negative cherries) make this result mathematically incorrect.
Jun 20	comment	How many spins does it take to complete a game of Hi Ho! Cherry-O? FYI, this is a question about probability, not statistics. I've re-tagged.
Jun 15	comment	Can We Find a Middle Ground on the Russia First Turn Attack Rule In Allies and Axis? The rule change is just to help game balance. It tends to save some units that would otherwise die in a first turn Russian attack and perhaps more importantly, it gives Germany and Japan a more stable board to start from, which allows them to script their first turns. As for No Russian Attack, it's a pretty canonical rule variant, given that is shows up in the official 2nd edition rulebook in Appendix IV Optional Rules, page 31.
Jun 15	comment	Is drawing resources required? Well I buy that, but the site won't let me change my vote unless you edit your answer.
Jun 14	comment	Is drawing resources required? -1 because there's no rationale for why Catan falls into the first category. As far as I know forced draw is not in the actual rules (like taking a jump if you have one in checkers). Please add why you think Catan is a game of the first type, or why it should be.