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Hawks and Doves (Posted on 2004-09-13) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Whenever a hawk meets a dove, the dove is killed. Whenever two hawks meet, they fight to death, and both are killed. And if two doves meet, nothing bad happens.

There are H hawks and D doves, and you are either a hawk or a dove. Assuming that meetings are random, what are your chances of survival?

See The Solution Submitted by Federico Kereki    
Rating: 3.5000 (2 votes)

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Solution To Make Oskar's Solution Work... | Comment 10 of 22 |
(In reply to Final part by Old Original Oskar!)

Add that meetings can also take place between dead birds, or between a live bird and a dead bird. 

If two dead birds meet, they just stay dead.

If a live bird meets a dead bird, she just pays her respects with a little bow. 

I won't go through the details, but it can be shown that this modified problem is equivalent to the original.  It can also be shown that Oskar's reasoning works in this case.  (again, maybe Oskar's reasoning works in the original problem, I'm not sure - somebody would have to convince me of this formally).

In summary, then, combining with Charlie's contributions:

If you a hawk, your chances are 0 if H is even and 1/H if H is odd.  If you are a dove, your chances are 0 if H is odd and 1/(H+1) if H is even.


  Posted by David Shin on 2004-09-13 10:57:15
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