Economics Challenge Series – Challenge 5: Ice Cream Game

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the Economics Challenge Series for 2023. For the months of July and August, I am running an economics challenge series. The series consists of seven challenges. All seven challenges will commence in July and the results will be published and announced in August. Four of the seven challenges are returning from last year’s Challenge Series. Two are from the monthly contest series and one challenge is completely new. Below are the list of challenges.

• Challenge 1: Buying and Selling Game
• Challenge 2: Pick-a-Door
• Challenge 3: Complements and Substitutes
• Challenge 4: Buying and Selling Game (Business Version)
• Challenge 5: Ice Cream Game
• Challenge 6: Game Theory Game
• Challenge 7: Even-to-Win

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 Economics Challenge Series 2023 (Coming Soon).

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Welcome to the Ice Cream Game Challenge

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How to play?

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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 that 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 prices are hypothetical 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 for their stand in the comments section.

Only one participant can select a particular location. For example, if someone has already selected location NM, nobody else can select it. For this challenge, there only 35 locations. Therefore, only a maximum of 35 participants can enter; more details given later in the post.

Objectives of the game

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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

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• 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?

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• 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 400 if the beach was served by just one ice cream stand. For every ice cream stand added, the number of customers increases by 10% (linear). Therefore, if the beach was served by 8 ice cream stands, the number of customers would be 680 (400 + (40 × 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?

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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 results will be presented in a video.

Challenge Prizes

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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

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

• North Beach
• East Beach
• West Beach

North Beach is 1,400m long. It has 15 possible locations for ice cream stands. East Beach is 1,100m long. It has 12 possible locations for ice cream stands. West Beach is 700m long. It has 8 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

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Entry format

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

Location:

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Example of entry

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Location: WE

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The closing date and time for this challenge is 6PM coordinated universal time (UTC) 27/07/2023. 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 this fifth challenge. 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.

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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.

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