inpromissum

Mathematical Conundrum

Sad story: Tikal is temporarily out of print. I looked long and wide and couldn't find a copy, until ...
Happy story: I found one at a shop down in Oregon and it just arrived.
Sadder story: It's missing a piece.

This was mail-order, so it's not a trivial matter to return it.

Now, if this was just an ordinary colored counter or something, you could get by by just replacing it with something. In this case, though, it's not that easy.

One of the mechanics of the game revolves around treasures - there are 8 different types of treasures, 3 each, for a total of 24. Eight times during the game, three of them need to be chosen randomly, face-down, such that nobody knows what they are.

The fact that I'm missing one now causes a serious problem. How do you emulate that piece properly in any reasonable way, such that the play of the game works exactly the same with the same probabilities, without replacing all of the counters? If you can replace them all (e.g. with cards), you can achieve the same effect. But assuming I don't want to go that far, is there any way to emulate the same statistical probabilities? I've come close, but the best I can do is come up with a mechanism that makes things work out right, but requires revealing the contents of the first set ... certainly not ideal.

--Nick

Edit: Prompted by Hoop's bitching, the description of the problem has been tightened up and clarified.

Posted by Nick at January 14, 2004 03:11 AM | TrackBack