{"id":1282,"date":"2008-02-23T08:49:03","date_gmt":"2008-02-23T14:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/granades.com\/2008\/02\/23\/so-it-should-take-eli-and-me-31-turns-to-play-candy-land\/"},"modified":"2008-02-23T08:49:03","modified_gmt":"2008-02-23T14:49:03","slug":"so-it-should-take-eli-and-me-31-turns-to-play-candy-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/granades.com\/?p=1282","title":{"rendered":"So It Should Take Eli and Me 31 Turns to Play Candy Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, in one of my brief respites from feeling terrible, I came across a mathematical analysis of Candy Land<\/a>. He does an analytic analysis which assumes independent draws (i.e. you draw a card and then put it back in and reshuffle the deck) and a Monte Carlo analysis that’s much more realistic. According to Lou Scheffer, a two-person game has a mode of 31 turns.<\/p>\n

But wait! There are other analyses! This one<\/a> is an analytical solution using Maple, while this one<\/a> uses MATLAB to compare Cootie, Candy Land, and Chutes and Ladders to decide which is the least painful to play. I’ve said that Candy Land is a deeply stupid and annoying game, and the last link backs me up on that — according to his analysis, of the three games, Candy Land is likely to take the longest time to play.<\/p>\n

As Barry Wise, author of the final article, says, “This article demonstrates how Monte Carlo simulation can be used to solve a real-world, every day problem: Of these three games, which one will provide entertainment for my four-year-old yet let me retain my sanity?” And people say you can’t do anything useful with math!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, in one of my brief respites from feeling terrible, I came across a mathematical analysis of Candy Land. He does an analytic analysis which assumes independent draws (i.e. you draw a card and then put it back in and reshuffle the deck) and a Monte Carlo analysis that’s much more realistic. According to Lou … Continue reading So It Should Take Eli and Me 31 Turns to Play Candy Land<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t