Economics Challenge Series 2024 – Challenge 1: Ice Cream Game

about 2 months ago

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the Economics Challenge Series for 2024. For July and August, I am running an economics challenge series. The series consists of seven challenges. All the challenges will commence in July and early August. The results will be published and announced in August.

Six of the seven challenges are returning from last year’s Challenge Series. The Tax Game from 2022 is replacing the business version of the Buying and Selling Game. Below is the list of challenges.

Challenge 1: Ice Cream Game
Challenge 2: Game Theory Game
Challenge 3: Pick-a-Door
Challenge 4: Complement vs. Substitute
Challenge 5: The Buying and Selling Game
Challenge 6: Even-to-Win
Challenge 7: Tax Game

Each challenge could reward winners with as much as 60 Hive Power. The value of the prize will depend on the level of participation. For each new participant, the prize will increase by 5 Hive Power. This will continue until 60 Hive Power is reached (12 participants). The first 12 participants will also receive a 50% upvote from this account.

In addition to the prize money, the top few participants will be given points. These points will be used to determine the overall challenge series winner. This winner may receive as much as 80 Hive Power. The value of the prize will equal the sum of the number of participants across all challenges. This will continue until 80 Hive Power is reached.

For more information on the challenge series and the upcoming challenges, I recommend that you read my post from last year. This year’s Challenge Series is run the same way as last year’s.

Welcome to the Ice Cream Game Challenge

How to Play?

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 them. The stand can only attract customers who do not need to pass another ice cream stand (competitor) to reach it. The ice creams sold by each stand are identical.

All the information you need to know to play the game is provided in the question, i.e., no external research is required as all necessary information about customers is provided and locations are fictitious.

All entries must be made in the comments section of this post.

Each account is only permitted one entry.

Participants are not permitted to edit their entry after stating the location of their stand in the comments section.

Only one participant can select a particular location. For example, if someone has already selected location WH, nobody else can. For this challenge, there are only 41 locations. Therefore, only a maximum of 41 participants can enter; more details are given later in the post.

Objectives of the Game

The objective of the game is to obtain the highest number of customers from the sale of ice cream. If two participants attract the exact same number of customers, the participant who entered first wins.

Game Assumptions

Prices and costs are not relevant to this challenge.
Potential customers are evenly distributed across the lengths of the beaches.
Each beach has a predetermined number of locations for setting up stands. For example, a beach that is 2000 metres long might have 21 possible locations for stands. These possible locations are located 100 metres apart. A participant could place their stand at the 0 metre mark, 100 metre mark, 200 metre mark,…, 2000 metre mark.
Customers are divided equally between the closest stands. For example, if there are 100 customers between two stands, 50 would go to each stand.
Participants are assigned a number based on order of entry. This is important as there is a high chance of a tie.

What Information is Provided?

The lengths of the beaches.
The number of beaches.
The number of locations to place stands on each beach.
Relationship between number of customers and number of stands
The exact number of customers on each beach is not provided. Instead, a range is provided. This range follows a uniform distribution. The range is used to determine an initial number of customers; this number is then adjusted by a factor relating to the number of stands. For example, the number of customers could be 600 if the beach was served by just one ice cream stand. For every ice cream stand added, the number of customers increases by 2% (linear). Therefore, if the beach was served by 8 ice cream stands, the number of customers would be 684 (600 + (12 × 7)).

The gif below contains an example of how the game is played. It displays the number of customers each ice cream stand attracts once new participants enter. The last image displays the winner.

Note: There are 480 potential customers. For this example, for simplicity, assume additional stands do not attract more potential customers,

How are the Results of the Game Determined?

A Microsoft Excel model is used to determine the number of customers for each beach. The customers will be divided up amongst the ice cream stands based on where they are located on the beach. In the results post, the calculation of the results will be presented in a video.

Challenge Prizes

The total prize for this challenge could reach as high as 60 Hive Power. The number of participants determines the value of the prize. For every entry, the prize is increased by 5 Hive Power until a value of 60 Hive Power is reached. The winner will receive 2/3 of the prize, and second place will receive 1/3. The first 12 entries will be given upvotes. The winner of this challenge will be given 30 points, second place 20 points, and third place 10 points. These points will be tallied at the end of the challenge series to determine the overall winner.

Let the Challenge Begin!

For this challenge, participants have a choice of 3 beaches. These beaches are as follows:

East Beach
South Beach
West Beach

East Beach is 700m long. It has 7 possible locations for ice cream stands. South Beach is 1,900m long. It has 19 possible locations for ice cream stands. West Beach is 1,200m long. It has 12 possible locations for ice cream stands. Below is a map of the 3 beaches.

Map of Island with Beaches

Table 1 contains the possible locations for ice cream stands. Refer to map for the placement of these locations.

Possible Locations for Ice Cream Stands

There is no certainty regarding the number of potential customers for ice cream on any given day. Instead, we have a range for the possible number of potential customers each beach could receive.

In addition to this estimate, each ice cream stand will attract more customers to the beaches. See the range of customers and the percentage increase in the number of customers caused by increasing the number of ice cream stands in the table below.

Range of Possible Number of Customers on Each Beach

Entry Format

For this challenge, I expect to see entries made in the following format:

Location:

Example of Entry

Location: EG

The closing date and time for this challenge is 6PM coordinated universal time (UTC) 22/07/2024. Responses after this time will not be accepted. The answers will be provided in the results post along with the video containing the generation of the total number of customers for each beach as well as the number of customers for each stand.

I hope everyone has fun and enjoys the first challenge for this year's series. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section. I look forward to your participation in the next challenge. It will be available in a few days.

My New Book, Sapien Loop

I have published an ebook on Amazon; it is titled ‘Sapien Loop: End of an Era’. The book is fiction. I do not normally write fiction. However, I felt it was appropriate considering what is happening in the world today. Freedom is the most important thing we have, but we are gradually losing it. I have covered this in many of my posts.

In the story, most citizens do not understand the concept of freedom because they have never really experienced it. In essence, the story is about an alien world that might represent our not-so-distant future. There are many other elements to the story that are an abstract and exaggerated version of our reality. I believe this book to be an important read, and I believe it has the potential to change the way you think.

Brief Summary of Sapien Lopp

This story is based on the fictional planet Sapia and its sole country, Sapey. Sapey is portrayed as a form of utopia for all its citizens. No poverty. No war. Almost no crime. Opportunities for all.

This was enough for most citizens, but not all. In one of the small regions, some of the citizens had become discontent. They felt something important was missing in their lives. Their discontent did not go unnoticed. Some of the Sapey elite wanted to weaponise this discontent to gain more power. This created more chaos than they anticipated. This led to further widespread social unrest.

On top of the chaos, ambition and greed provoked another enemy. This enemy was on a mission to settle both new and old scores.

If you want to buy a copy of the book, below are links to the relevant Amazon websites for each country it is available in. The book is priced at approximately US$5.08.

I am also running monthly contests where participants are required to answer questions based on the book. The prize is 30 Hive Power plus upvotes for the first twelve entries. You can recover the cost of the book with just one win.