Woo-hoo! My number of site viewers to my blog has doubled today!

It largely has to do with the Penney's Game episode of Scam School. Right at the end of the episode, he mentions that several people sent it in, but only mentions my name and my site specifically!

If you're not familiar with Penney's Game, check out this episode, as it's very surprising that it works.

Check out this episode's ending joke: “Next week, we're going to be learning, from a memory expert, a mnemonic device that will allow you to memorize the entire constitution in 20 minutes.”

Boy, do I feel weird for actually doing that: Part I, Part II, Part III

I like this scam a lot.

You could play it like you're influencing either the coin or their flipping action to get the result you want.


Steve

That's cool, Scott! Congrats!

Something just struck me about the non-transitive nature of the game, if there are more than 2 players:

Let's say that A selects HHT.

B knows the strategy and selects THH to beat A most of the time.

C also knows the strategy and wants to beat B so he selects TTH.

D wants to beat C so he selects HTT.

This makes A happy, beacuse he sees that his choice HHT will beat D most of the time.

So who wins this game most of the time when it is played? What about if only A, B and C plays? Will C be the winner in the long run?

/Tomas

Scott, just saw this thread today. I hope it was noted, or at least that people are aware, that Derren Brown made use of this game in one of his recent television specials. If you have not seen that, you should check it out. I'll try and watch your videos this evening.

http://blog.wolfram.com/2010/11/30/how-t......lipping/

I, like Nick Trost, prefer to use cards instead of coins for this scam.

See The Penney Paradox in The Card Magic of Nick Trost pp. 89-92.

I like this. But since it's not 100%, I was wondering if the odds can be increased by using a sequence of 4 coin tosses rather than 3. Any of you math studs know? If so, would the method change (i.e., would you still use your opponents first two values)? And even if it does increase the odds, would the whole process now be too drawn out and tedious to make it worthwile?

Thanks!

Ron