Value System Solving
Activity 1 Value System Solving: Solving Basics!
Do you have a favorite pizza flavor? Or what about a cake batter preference? Or perhaps you favor beach-front property over in-land? These are the kinds of considerations that are taken into account when someone participates in an actual fair division problem. The part that adds some complexity is that I am not you, and you are not me.
I may have my own special preferences…but I also have specific
weights assigned to those preferences. See job aid for more details.
Pick something that you and a group want to divide up.
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- Do you want to fairly divide a pizza?
- Or perhaps a batch of discrete objects?
- Or are you tired of food and want to do something like a piece of property?
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Activity 2 Scrabble P.P.T: Averaging and Solving
Every played a game of Scrabble? It’s definitely a lot of fun, and believe it or not there’s a lot of math involved! With your group play a normal game for about 30 minutes (long enough for everyone to get about half a dozen turns in).
Once you all have played through at least 6 turns, determine what each of your Points Per Turn (P.P.T.) was for this game. Do this on an individual basis rather than for the how group. How does your P.P.T. compare with Scrabble professionals? If the game was going to go to the end, how many points would you probably have had?
Can you use the P.P.T. to be a better Scrabble player? Describe the best way for you to become a better player through your personal P.P.T.
Activity 3 Game production and Distribution: Expression Operations
With your group consider how much it actually costs to produce a game of Scrabble.
- What goes into that game?
- Is it cheaper to build small or large batches of the game?
- What does it take to distribute it to retailers?
Conduct some research to find out estimates on the cost to produce the tiles, the boards, the rules, the tile bag (if there’s one in your set), etc. Once you get a rough estimate of how much each piece will cost, explore what would happen as you combine all of these elements.
Keep in mind that the cost of producing each unit will most likely go down as you increase the volume, but is it worth it? Compare your cost estimates with how much the game sells for. Based on your estimates, how many units did the company need to produce before this game becomes profitable?
Try the quiz to check your understanding.
Activity 4 What happens to the game as players are added or removed?
In the last module you chose a game that involved math. In this module you will need to explore the game pieces that are most important to the game: the players! Every game has a set number of suggested players, which could be anywhere from 2 to 4 or possibly 5 to 13 players.
Your job this week is to explore what happens to the game across the different numbers of players, including but not limited to how it plays, how resources are utilized (or taxed), length of game-time, and the nature of player interactions.
Based on all of this information and analysis, decide what you feel is the optimal number of players to have the fairest, most fun time with the game.
