Re: Will this scheme work ...

From: jonathan@psych.psy.uq.oz.au (Jonathan Dwyer)

Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 04:02:23 +0000

lance@circle.raleigh.nc.us (Lance A. Brown) writes:
|> anspring@news.delphi.com (ANSPRING@DELPHI.COM) writes:
|> >  Mayan Moudgill) writes:
|> >>>>The Problem:
|> >>>>A group of people are playing a game over e-mail. They need to throw dice
|> >>>>every turn. Unfortunately, they can't find somebody ``trustworthy'' to
|> >>>>do it for them. So, how can they throw dice
|> >>>>
|> > How about this:  Each player generates a large random number, computes
|> > the MD5 hash, and then discloses the hash to the other players...................
|>
|> Jeepers cripes.  Whatever happened to the "honor system"?

I think that it would become obvious after a little while if one player was not
disclosing real die rolls.   I think there would probably be other correlates in
the way he/she played to lend weight to, or detract from, any conclusions about
their 'honesty'.  If you _really_ wanted to check it out, couldn't you simply keep
a record of each player's individual die face observations, and encourage any
others able to do so to do likewise?  After a few weeks of play a simple frequency
count or histogram would make any skew in the distributions rather obvious.

I think this is probably unneccesary, there's nothing wrong with trusting honesty....

Jon.
--
    __  __ ____
   / / / // __ \ Jonathan Dwyer (FAX+6173654466)
  / / / // / / / Department of Psychology
 / / / // / / /  The University of Queensland
/ /_/ // /_/ <   St. Lucia, 4072. AUSTRALIA
\____/*\_____/*  jonathan@psych.psy.uq.oz.au

References

Re: Will this scheme work ...
TSOS@uni-duesseldorf.de (Detlef Lannert)
Thu, 07 Oct 1993 10:01:49 +0000
Re: Will this scheme work ...
payson@dr-hibbert.cs.wisc.edu ( Payson)
Thu, 07 Oct 1993 16:51:59 +0000
Re: Will this scheme work ...
anspring@news.delphi.com (ANSPRING@DELPHI.COM)
Fri, 08 Oct 1993 01:41:50 +0000
Re: Will this scheme work ...
lance@circle.raleigh.nc.us (Lance A. Brown)
Thu, 14 Oct 1993 05:26:24 +0000