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?

(In reply to re: not much of a clue here by Matthijs)

New and more extended simulations yielded that the average number of surviving doves M is not exactly equal to (D/H):

Averaged over 500000 simulations:

H = 10  ;  D = 200  ; D/H = 20 ; M = 18,,47 

H = 20  ;  D = 200  ; D/H = 10 ; M = 9,474 

H = 50  ;  D = 200  ; D/H = 4 ; M = 3,952

H = 100  ;  D = 200  ; D/H = 2 ; M = 1,998

H = 200  ;  D = 200  ; D/H = 1 ; M = 0,990

H = 200  ;  D = 100  ; D/H = 0,5 ; M = 0,488

H = 200  ;  D = 50  ; D/H = 0,25 ; M = 0,248

H = 200  ;  D = 20  ; D/H = 0,10 ; M = 0,0988 

It seems that M = D/(H+1) is the best fit for these results.

This should confirm Oskars solution of a probability (1/(H+1)) for surviving of a dove in case of an even number of hawks. 

Maybe he was right after all.

Matthijs

 

 

 

 

ResultsH

Posted by Matthijs on 2004-09-17 11:15:47