School of Dreams (119)

The School of Dreams team (#119) is from Los Lunas. This year they've submitted a project titled FARKLE.

Proposal
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_proposal1112.php?team_id=119

Farkle

Team: 119

School: School of Dreams Academy

Area of Science: Probability

Proposal: On the day of October twenty-fifth team 119 would like to ask for the acceptance of project; Farkle. Farkle is a game played with six dice in which players compete to recieve 10,000 points first. The main issue we want to fix is to have a person have better skills in the game in which this person could have a better chance to become a winner. Also in this project we will explain the probability of a successful round in this tricky game. This will be a long-term project but we are excited to learn a new thing to better ourselves for college. Lastly we wanted to understand the best strategies for winning the game of Farkle. We hope to make it to Los Alamos and to present our project to you in the near future. Thank you and we hope to see you in five months.

Team Members:

Adrian Landstedt Nathan Wright Jose Montoya

Sponsoring Teacher: Creighton Edington

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=119

FARKLE

Team: 119

School: School of Dreams Academy

Area of Science: Probability

Definition of Problem:
The project we are doing is named Farkle. Farkle is a dice game involving a simple scoring system and a big part of it is luck, but there is also the strategy involved. Our problem is to try and find the best strategy to win as much as possible.

Our plan for solving the problem on the computer:
WE are planning on using a computer program called MatLab. Liz Finley helped choose MatLab. MatLab is a high-level interactive program that can do measurements and testing, it can do financial things, and many other things that are too hard to just do alone. We will be using MatLab because we decided to find every possible combination of dice that we will be able to roll. MatLab will make it easier for us be finding the combinations itself.

What we have done so far:
So far on our project we have gone through many websites researching about Farkle. We have found out how to score, how to play, and the background of the game. The scoring, as I said earlier, is simple. In the game you have to collect points, and to win you need 10,000 points. In order to get points you need to collect 1's, 5's, 123456, or three of the same after rolling 6 dice. This game needs strategy because you need to decide if you are going to keep everything that scores points or just keep rolling to see if you get more points. After you roll once and collect what you want, you roll again and if you cant collect 1's or 5's then you get Farkle, and only collect the points of the dice you have taken out of the game. If you dont get Farkle because all the dice score you points then you collect the points from the 6 dice and then roll all the dice again in the same process until you get Farkle. The end of the game comes when after a long series of rounds occurs, someone gets to 10,000 points

Results we expect to get:
Our hypothesis is that using a Defensive Strategy would be the best way to win most of the time. The Defensive Strategy is where you try to get as many points as possible. It is the same as collecting all points but this is more strategic. With this strategy you try to get alot of points in just one round. For example, if you roll the dice and you end up with one 1 and two 5's instead of taking all three dice you take the 1 which is worth the same as both 5's. Then you roll the rest of the dice and there is a smaller chance of getting Farkle. This will give you a better chance of getting three or more of the same number. Which will end up getting you more points.

Our Five Citations:
http://www.farklerules.com/ (Farkle rules) Liz Finley, NM Tech student, Math Major (Personal Interview) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/farkle http://apps.facebook.com/hotdices/ http://smartboxdesign.com/farklerules.html

Team Members:

Adrian Landstedt Nathan Wright Jose Montoya

Sponsoring Teacher: Creighton Edington

Introduction
Hello, My name is Joaquin Roibal and I am an engineering student at New Mexico Tech. This is my first year with the supercomputing challenge and I am excited to help you out with your project. I will be using the grading rubric that you will be judged using in April. The grading rubric attempts to quantify your results and give a value based upon how well you accomplished tasks such as mathematical modelling, code, etc.

Problem Statement
The problem is clearly stated with goals, what you would like to accomplish, as well as a framework and set of rules that will be followed. A bit more explanation on the rules would be useful, as I had to go to a different website to understand the rules and variants of the game.

[4/4]

Mathematical Model
A clear and accurate description of the future mathematical model is given, but the actual model is not given nor is the progress and difficulties described in the proposal. MatLab can be a challenge to work with but should provide a very solid modeling language once the mathematical model is created. It is my suggestion that you first write a program where different users can 'play' the game, and then once this framework is established, work on developing a strategy for computers to 'play' the game. Also think about what variables will need to be considered. In the proposal, your team mentions 'defensive' playing.

[3/4]

Computational Model
MatLab is a very easy, simple, but powerful tool for mathematical modelling. It will be a challenge for your team to decide how they will display the results obtained, how the different 'players' will interact with each other, etc. Does your team have a mentor for the computer programming and what challenges have you come across in building the computational model?

[3/4]

Results & Conclusions
Because this is an interim report, your team does not have results & conclusions. During this process it would be helpful for your team to answer these questions as you are coming up with results and designing your computational model.

What are we hoping to gain from this mathematical model?

What input/interaction will the user have during the course of a FARKLE game?

What are some of the aspects of strategy that the computer will need to consider?

[??/4]

Code
There is no code included in this proposal. During your next proposal and when you do face-to-face proposals, ensure that you have the code that you have worked on available for the reviewer.

[??/4]

Display
There is no display on this proposal, and that will be a real challenge for this team. What are the results you are hoping to gain from this project? How are you going to communicate these ideas? Effective communication will be a real challenge for this proposal.

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Conclusion
Overall this is a very ambitious project, but very doable. The complexity of the project will come into play with interaction between computer players, strategies, quantifying variables, etc. If you do not have a mentor yet I would suggest looking for one. Good luck with the future project!

-Joaquin Roibal