Economics Challenge Series 2024 – Challenge 1: Ice Cream Game Chall...

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. I will publish and announce the results in August.

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

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, I recommend that you read my post from last year. This year’s Challenge Series is run the same way as last year’s.

Results

Welcome to the results post for the Ice Cream Game Challenge. This post contains the results as well as how they were generated using a Microsoft Excel model.

Winner Determined in this Video

What is the Ice Cream Game?

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 customers. 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. Therefore, participants cannot compete on price or quality of product.

The objective of the game is to obtain the most customers. If two participants obtain the same number of customers, the participant who entered first wins.

Responses to the contest are made in the comments section of the post.

The format of the required entry is explained in detail in the challenge itself.

Results of the Ice Cream Game Challenge

Table 1 contains the locations selected by each participant.

Table 1: Locations Selected by Participants

Note: Participants in red are not considered as they have either selected a location taken by another participant.

Table 2 contains the number of customers on each beach. This includes a basic number that would be attracted to the beach if there was one ice cream stand as well as additional customers attracted to the beach as the number of ice cream stands increases (2% increase per ice cream stand).

Table 2: Total Number of Customers for Each Beach

Beach	Minimum	Maximum	Final Value
North	600	800	614
East	500	1000	692
West	800	1400	1258

Note: Final values may exceed maximum because the stated maximum does not include the increase in the number of customers caused by more ice cream stands on the beach.

The values used in Table 2 have been used to determine the number of customers the participants’ ice cream stand received based on their locations. See Table 3 for the results of this challenge.

Table 3: Number of Customers for Each Participant

A total of 9 participants entered this challenge. Therefore, the prizes for this challenge amount to 45 Hive Power (9 × 5): 30 Hive Power for the winner and 15 Hive Power for second place.

Congratulations to @emeka4 for winning the Ice Cream Game Challenge. He attracted 891 customers to his ice cream stand at West Beach. Second place goes to @urrirru for attracting 614 from East Beach. Third place goes to @micheal87 for attracting 455 customers from South Beach. @emeka4 wins 30 Hive Power and 30 points. @urrirru wins 15 Hive Power and 20 points. @micheal87 wins 10 points.

Overall Series Score

After one challenge, the overall scores for the Challenge Series are as follows:

Position	Participants	Points
1	Emeka4	30
2	Urrirru	20
3	Micheal87	10

This table will be updated in every results post.

Tips for Future Ice Cream Games

The Ice Cream Game is considerably less complex than most of the other games in the Challenge Series. There are three important areas that participants should consider before selecting a location.

The expected number of customers for the beach. It is better to select a beach that attracts more customers in respect to its length. The mean number of customers is easy to calculate as a uniform distribution is used. A higher mean is also likely to attract more ice cream stands. This will further increase the number of customers to the beach. However, this also increases the risk of being surrounded by other ice cream stands, thus limiting the number of customers.

The number of ice cream stands in close proximity. It is better to select a location that is not close to other ice cream stands. At the time of entry, this is difficult to determine as a participant entering later could choose the location next to yours. To reduce the chances of this happening, it might be wise to select a location next to an undesirable location. The least desirable locations are the end locations. Therefore, the second from the end location is likely to attract relatively more customers if the challenge has a high number of entries.

Timing of entry. Entering early has the advantage of winning tiebreakers, which is important in a game where many participants are likely to attract the same number of customers. However, entering early leaves the participant blind to the actions of others. It is possible that his or her location could become surrounded by later entries. Entering too late puts a participant at a disadvantage as all the good locations have probably been taken. Entering reasonably early is likely to be better than entering very early (e.g. in the first three) or late (e.g. after the 10th). This timing of entry is most advantageous when there are few entries or when the actions of other participants are not strategic (e.g., selecting end locations).

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.

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Economics Challenge Series 2024 – Challenge 1: Ice Cream Game Challenge Results