December 07, 2008Taxman GameAnother gem from my neighbor Tom Sander. The "taxman" game is (apparently) an old programming exercise. But it is also a good game for practicing factors. I have been playing it a bit with Anthony (by hand). Here is a gadget that applies the rules of the game for you. The rules are simple and fifth-grade friendly:
It is worth playing without reading anything else - it is not too hard to find a heuristic that beats the taxman. The game was written up in an article by Moniot in the Feb 2007 MAA Horizons - an optimal strategy is not known. I've gotten up to 121 points on the 20-size board; I am pretty sure this is not optimal. Can you beat the board with 100 squares? What is the best score you can get? Posted by David at December 7, 2008 05:12 PMComments
David -- Highest I've been able to get to with board of 20 is 124 from drawing numbers in this order (19,14,10,20,16,15,12,18). I suspect this is not optimal. Best. Tom Posted by: Tom Sander at December 9, 2008 08:26 AMHm, I'm pretty sure 124 is optimal! Posted by: David at December 11, 2008 09:22 PMI got 2957 v 2093 using the "greedy" algorithm. I a fairly certain it isn't optimal. John Posted by: John Kemeny at January 5, 2009 04:09 PMwhat's the highest possible score for Taxman 24? Posted by: dude wheres my car? at November 4, 2009 06:57 PMIm pretty sure the Highest possible score in Taxman is something like 1227. Thats the highest I've gotten with my friends soo... Yah... Posted by: Dude What's mine say? at November 4, 2009 07:01 PMisn't that..... impossible? Posted by: dude wheres my car? at November 4, 2009 07:03 PMhi Posted by: at April 22, 2010 01:41 PMI just got Score: 3006 Taxman: 2044 Posted by: dustin at July 13, 2010 05:46 PM124 must be optimal. 19 is the correct first move as it is the largest prime on the board. Since 11, 13, and 17 are also prime and larger than half of 20, we cannot choose those, so the taxman gets them always. After the first move, there are 15 numbers that we can choose from left on the board, as 1, 11, 13, 17, and 19 are now gone. Since the taxman must receive at least one number each time we choose a number, the greatest number of picks that we have left is the floor of 15/2, which is 7. Thus we want 19 and the highest remaining 7 numbers, excluding 11, 13, and 17. The highest 7 remaining numbers would be, in descending order, 20, 18, 16, 15, 14, 12, 10. 19+20+18+16+15+14+12+10=124. Since there is a sequence of choices that will actually give us this outcome, that score is optimal. Posted by: tony at April 2, 2011 12:28 PMDid you know that you can type in 999 and it will make a board with 999 numbers. You can get scores over 25000 Posted by: will at April 12, 2011 08:46 AMImpossible to win on 3 board. Posted by: Bacon at January 11, 2012 09:26 AMYeah, 999 is hard. And yes, I knew that. Posted by: Bacon at January 11, 2012 09:28 AMWoo cares tony Posted by: Rinder at February 20, 2012 09:46 AMI'm not tony Posted by: Bacon at May 16, 2012 09:46 AMPost a comment
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