Private Message to Professor Dolohov
Aug. 15th, 2013 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_linusAs per our earlier conversation, I am submitting my analyses for grading.
This was my analysis of today's token-gathering exercise, as near as I can recollect the exact wording as delivered to Harry and the rest of the team:
Professor Dolohov said: "The goal is to collect as many tokens as possible."
If the goal is for me to collect as many tokens as possible, I can allocate my time to finding tokens, to taking tokens from other people, or a combination. Obviously, taking tokens from other people is a superiour choice there, as long as I can successfully increasing my own token-per-hour rate significantly over what it would be had I just been harvesting.
However, Professor Dolohov said, "The goal is to collect as many tokens as possible." Not individually, and not even by team. It is my experience that Professor Dolohov views misdirection by telling the truth as a sport. Therefore I suspect we will at some point all be on one team, and furthermore that this is where the tokens gathered will be useful. If that is the case, then we must maximise our total token gathering, regardless of who gets the most individually or by team. In fact, under this scenario, allocating any person-hours to capturing tokens rather than gathering them is a grave error. Even if the other team takes them away, gathering would still be the best strategy -- if I am right.
Maximising that strategy by informing the other team is an option best left up to the team leader.
There is another possible strategy, but I am strongly disinclined to recommend it, as I do not think that even with both teams participating we could capture both Professor Dolohov and Auror Desai and induce them to tell us where all the tokens are.
This was my analysis of today's token-gathering exercise, as near as I can recollect the exact wording as delivered to Harry and the rest of the team:
Professor Dolohov said: "The goal is to collect as many tokens as possible."
If the goal is for me to collect as many tokens as possible, I can allocate my time to finding tokens, to taking tokens from other people, or a combination. Obviously, taking tokens from other people is a superiour choice there, as long as I can successfully increasing my own token-per-hour rate significantly over what it would be had I just been harvesting.
However, Professor Dolohov said, "The goal is to collect as many tokens as possible." Not individually, and not even by team. It is my experience that Professor Dolohov views misdirection by telling the truth as a sport. Therefore I suspect we will at some point all be on one team, and furthermore that this is where the tokens gathered will be useful. If that is the case, then we must maximise our total token gathering, regardless of who gets the most individually or by team. In fact, under this scenario, allocating any person-hours to capturing tokens rather than gathering them is a grave error. Even if the other team takes them away, gathering would still be the best strategy -- if I am right.
Maximising that strategy by informing the other team is an option best left up to the team leader.
There is another possible strategy, but I am strongly disinclined to recommend it, as I do not think that even with both teams participating we could capture both Professor Dolohov and Auror Desai and induce them to tell us where all the tokens are.
no subject
on 2013-08-15 05:07 am (UTC)You are correct that you would not have found Auror Desai and I to be easy targets, though I would have been most amused had you tried!
And quite an interesting analysis. I will not provide you any more detail than that, lest I provide you an improper advantage, but it is intriguing to see the ways in which your mind works.
I trust, meanwhile, that you are sleeping soundly by this point; you all have quite an eventful week ahead of you.
Regards,
Professor Dolohov